Thursday, January 31, 2013

ETS Dental Webinar Recording: Your Career and the Dental Job Market

On Tuesday evening we held a webinar for Dental Students and Dental Residents.  In the webinar we covered the the current market, CVs, resumes, cover letters, interview tips, compensation, contracts, location, and we had some questions and answers at the end.   We are sharing the recording of this webinar with you.

To view the webinar click here: ETS Dental Webinar: Your Career and the Dental Job Market.

You will see many links in the webinar slides which are clickable, but I have listed them below as well.


Social media:

For other great information and our current job postings go to ETSdental.com


We had a great time doing this, and we look forward to offering more webinars in the future. If you have any questions or you have some recommendations for future webinars contact Carl Guthrie at cguthrie@etsdental.com.  

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Tips for a Great Phone Interview


Your first phone call with a hiring practice is very important.  As the old saying goes, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."  Many of our client practices use a phone interview to decide which candidates they would like to take the time to meet with in person.  To help you put your best foot forward, here are a few tips:

Be Prepared to Interview 
  • Have your résumé or CV nearby so that it is easily accessible when a practice calls.
  • Make a short list of your accomplishments available to review. 
  • Have a pen and paper handy for note taking. 
  • Turn call-waiting off so that your call isn't interrupted. 
  • If the time isn't convenient, ask if you could talk at another time and suggest some alternatives. 
  • Clear the room - evict the kids and the pets. Turn off the stereo and the TV. Close the door. 
  • Unless you're sure your cell phone service is going to be perfect, consider using a landline rather than your cell phone to avoid a dropped call or static on the line.

During the Phone Interview 
  • Don't smoke, chew gum, eat, or drink.
  • Do keep a glass of water handy, in case you need to wet your mouth. 
  • Smile. Smiling will project a positive image to the listener and will change the tone of your voice. 
  • Speak slowly and enunciate clearly. 
  • Refrain from using slang. 
  • Use the person's title (Dr., Mr., or Ms. and their last name.) Only use a first name if they ask you to. 
  • Don't interrupt the interviewer. 
  • Take your time - it's perfectly acceptable to take a moment or two to collect your thoughts. 
  • Give short answers. 
The goal of a phone interview is to set-up a face-to-face interview. At the end of the call, thank the interviewer, and ask if it would be possible to meet in person. 

Contributed by Chante Smith.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

2012 Lessons Learned

In January each year, I take some time to review virtually every activity and metric in our business. My purpose is simply to figure out what worked, what didn’t work and how the business of recruiting dentists for dental practices has changed. I thought I would share some of our results and observations. Our team has a unique vantage on the dental industry. Our experience and lessons learned over the past year may help you if you are a dentist who owns a practice, or if you are a dentist who is seeing a new opportunity (associate, partner, or buyer), or if you are a professional who caters to the dental profession.

Image1Background: ETS Dental specializes in finding and placing dentists with practices across the country. Our team consists of seven recruiters (Account Executives – five recruit general dentists, one recruits dental specialists, and one sources and screens dental staff members). In 2012, our team made more than 120,000 phone calls, sent 240,000 emails, and spent nearly 5,000 hours on the phone speaking with dentists.

I am pleased to say that 2013 was another record year for ETS. We’ve grown every year since 2003. Here are a few things we have discovered about doing business in the dental industry:

Existing Clients:

66% of our placements occurred with previous clients.

Lesson Learned: Repeat clients are the mainstay of our business.

New Clients

·    40% of our new business came from marketing calls.
·    23% came from referrals.
·    19% came from clients seeking us out on the internet.
·    14% came from email marketing and social networking.

Lesson Learned: We found 40% of our new clients by calling them. 60% of our clients found us through referrals, our internet presence, email marketing and social networking.

Candidate Sources:

·    Less than 14% of our placements came from paid job boards.
·    Less than 12% of our placements came from free job boards.
·    74% of our placements came from ETS Dental recruiting efforts and the ETS Dental web site: www.etsdental.com.

Lesson Learned: Simply placing help wanted ads on job boards is not an effective way to find an associate.

Who is hiring:

Over the past three years, we’ve observed a tremendous shift in the type of practices who hire us to recruit a dentist associate:

·     Multi-state practice management companies have always represented less than 20% of our business.
·     Demand from not-for-profits has shrunk from 10% to 1%.
·     Our business with high-growth regional businesses (who do business in a few states, funded by outside money) and local dental businesses (a single or small group of  practices owned and tightly managed and funded by one or two business-minded dentists) has grown significantly. These two groups have a defined plan for growth and now represent 50% of our searches.
·    Group and individual practices who are more passive about the business aspect or their practices and do not have a defined action plan for growth have shrunk significantly as a percentage of our business (30%, down from 50%).

Lesson Learned: Dental practices (or organizations) with a well-thought-out plan for growth can thrive in just about any geography. Practices without a plan have not grown and prospered nearly this much over the past few years.
 
Written by Mark Kennedy, Owner/Managing Director of Executive Talent Search (ETS Dental, ETS Vision, ETS Tech-Ops). To find out more, call ETS Dental at (540) 563-1688 or visit us online at www.etsdental.com.  

Friday, January 4, 2013

Demand for College Graduates Climbs as Availability Continues to Fall

Most Americans do not have a college degree. Less than a third of the labor force over the age of 25 has a bachelor’s degree and only about 10 percent have graduate degrees. Yet, for most professional or managerial jobs a bachelor’s degree is not just preferred, but required. During the recession, with high unemployment and large perceived candidate availability, more roles began requiring advanced educations.

According to Burning Glass, a job boards analytics company, five years ago, just 12 percent of dental laboratory technician positions required a college degree, today, 33 percent do. Five years ago 43 percent of farm product buying and purchasing agent positions required bachelor’s degrees, today 77 percent do. Other occupations including cargo agents, insurance adjustors, and engineering technicians have all seen similar degree inflation during the recession.

“Degree inflation comes both from employers trying to better filter resumes, but also from the growing technical requirements of many positions,” says Rob Romaine, president of MRINetwork. “A draftsman used to need to go to a technical school to learn how to translate an architect’s designs into blueprints with a pencil and a ruler. Today, that position requires the use of computer-aided design software, and understanding of architecture, mathematics, science and technology. And increasingly frequently, a bachelor’s degree in architectural drafting and design too.”

The portion of job postings for architectural drafters requiring a bachelor’s degree has grown from 41 percent to 56 percent over the last five years according to Burning Glass.



The unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders has fallen from 5 percent in late 2010 to 3.8 percent in November and it is just one small indicator of a lack of available professional talent. While more jobs may require bachelor’s degrees, employers are also seeking candidates with more experience, something not necessarily obtained along with a degree. For those between 20 and 24 years old who want work, which includes recent college graduates, the unemployment rate is 12.7 percent, nearly twice the 6.5 percent unemployment rate for those over 25 years old.

“In general, unemployed bachelor’s degree holders are younger, less experienced, and less likely to be a match for the most critical mid-career vacancies,” says Romaine. “While there are clearly exceptions to this profile, finding the exceptions is one of the hardest parts of hiring in this economic environment.”

Even while the economy has been growing over the last year—albeit slowly—the impact on employment levels for those with lower levels of educational attainment has been devastating. Total employment for those without any college experience has fallen by 535,000 jobs in the last twelve months. For those with college experience, however, total employment has grown by more than 2.5 million positions, with 1.9 million of those jobs going to bachelor’s degree holders.

“For a company’s most critical positions you have to hire someone who already has the education, skills and needed experience on day one. For many roles there is little room for on the job training and if there isn’t an internal promotion possible, they will have to hire from the open market. That open market is a candidate pool which even in a struggling economy is extraordinarily tight,” says Romaine.