How to Hire Dental Assistants in 2023
If you’ve been struggling to hire dental assistants, you’re not alone. As another dentist shared with us, “I used to just call up a recruiter and say ‘I need another one’ and that was that. They’d send me some candidates and we’d hire someone. But that stopped working in 2020. Now I’ve tried everything. Online job boards, the ADA, even social media groups. But nothing’s working and we’re still short staffed all this time later!”
So why did these strategies stop working?
There are a lot of factors at play, but they can be summarised into two categories:
1. There’s been an exodus of existing dental assistants, so there simply aren’t enough trained DAs to meet demand.
2. And beginner DAs aren’t actively moving into the industry in high enough volume to fill the gaps.
Ultimately, when you’re trying to hire a dental assistant, you only have two options: hire a beginner, or hire an experienced DA. That’s it.
The problem is, for many practices, they still haven’t been able to find the talent they need even when they’ve opened their job listings up to trainees. “Experience not required” simply hasn’t been enough to entice applicants.
When we polled 84 dental practice owners and managers about their current hiring experiences, 83% said that they’re open to hiring beginners, and yet still having trouble.
Why is this happening?
It makes sense that experienced DAs are hard to find, because there simply aren’t enough of them to meet demand. But why are so many practices still struggling to get applications from even beginners?
It all comes down to this:
The strategies dentists are using to try to find dental assistants all rely on tapping into an audience of active job seekers.
Recruiters rely on people actively reaching out to them and saying they’re open to dental assisting.
The ADA, Seek, Indeed and other online job boards rely on people actively searching for dental assistant jobs.
And Facebook groups rely on people actively joining the group to see job openings.
One thing is clear…
There are not enough people actively searching for dental assisting jobs, either beginners or experienced. If there were, dental practices wouldn’t be short-staffed still!
If you want to hire dental assistants in 2023, you need to tap into the massive audience of inactive job seekers.
Here’s an illustration of this concept:
While the pool of active job seekers has been shrinking, the pool of inactive job seekers has only gotten bigger. It’s not like all the good employees just disappeared. Inactive job seekers are all the potential dental assistant employees out there who are just doing something else right now, but are open to the right opportunity.
Inactive job seekers include:
- DAs who left the workforce to have children, and are open to working again but haven’t started looking yet.
- Retail workers who want work that’s more challenging and rewarding.
- Aged care workers who are looking for a change.
- Teenagers who aren’t sure what they want to do after school.
There are lots and lots of inactive job seekers out there, just waiting for the right opportunity to come their way.
But it takes time and effort to get your job ad in front of inactive job seekers. They’re not as easy to find as active job seekers. And time is one thing dental teams are short on right now!
The Dental Assistant Network helps you get in front of both active and inactive job seekers quickly and easily. We have a growing network of active job seekers who receive daily notifications of new job openings in their area. But that’s not all.
When you advertise your dental assistant job opening on The Dental Assistant Network, we setup and run a digital advertising campaign to promote your job opportunity to inactive job seekers in your local area. Every job post is seen by up to 20,000 locals in your area. People often ‘tag’ other users who they think might be interested, or privately share the details with others.
Now, we’re not saying you’re going to suddenly be flooded with thousands of applications. What this advertising campaign helps you do is get in front of a much wider audience of inactive job seekers that wouldn’t otherwise see your job opening. It won’t be relevant to all 20,000 of the people who see the ad. But around 400 people click through onto every dental assistant job listing on The Dental Assistant Network. Which gives you a decent chance of finding a great DA.
This is completely different from just posting a job opening in a social media group. Groups depend on people actively joining the community. Plus, each post disappears quickly, often within 24-hours it’s hardly being seen by any new people. Which means the number of people you get in front of is very limited.
The Dental Assistant Network is the only job network offering this kind of exposure to both active and inactive job seekers. Other job boards like Seek charge $1,000 for premium listings, and that still won’t help you tap into the inactive job seeker audience.
But it doesn’t cost $1,000 to advertise with The Dental Assistant Network.
It doesn’t even cost $500, which would be an absolute bargain for the amount of exposure you’re able to get to local inactive job seekers.
The great news is it’s just $349 AUD to advertise your job opportunity with The Dental Assistant Network and have us run a digital advertising campaign on your behalf.
It’s quick and easy to set-up. Simply spend 15-minutes filling in your onboarding information including your practice details, logo and job listing.
Then we’ll take it from there and handle everything to spread the word about your job opening.
Click here to post your job on The Dental Assistant Network and start your advertising campaign
Dental Assistant Network