Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to the Doc Lounge podcast.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: This is a place for candid conversations with the healthcare industry's top physicians, executives, and thought leaders.
This podcast is made possible by Pacific companies, your trusted advisor and physician recruitment.
Welcome to the Doc Lounge podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Doyle, senior director of marketing at Pacific Companies.
In today's special episode, private practice profits, we're joined by Doctor Michael Neal, founder and CEO of Build my team, who is also a practicing optometrist. Doctor Neal brings a unique perspective on the pivotal role of support staff in the profitability and smooth operations of private practices. In our discussion today, we'll delve into how the quality of office and support staff directly influences a practice's success, explore common hiring mistakes, and examine the innovative strategies that can transform the recruitment process. Doctor Neal, drawing inspiration from renowned service leaders like Disney in the four seasons, will share his insights on applying these principles to healthcare staffing. So, tell us, how did your whole trajectory go? So you were and currently are a practicing physician, and then you're obviously founded this whole other business. So let us know how that happened.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah, by all means. So, I've been in private practice since I graduated optometry school back in 2001, so right off the bat, I better date myself.
And the trajectory is pretty straightforward in private practice. We're located in northeastern Pennsylvania, very rural area, and we don't have a talent pool up here. We have a talent puddle. Well, it used to be a puddle. Now it's pretty much even less than that since COVID But I. The. We've always had hiring issues in this environment, and what ended up happening is, back in about 2016, I just. I threw in the towel. I said to myself, there has to be a better way to do this because we had all kinds of turnover. We were hiring wrong, etc. Etc. I mean, so many folks listening to this right now, they've never taken any. Any schooling or otherwise on how to great. Get great talent on your team. You know what I mean?
I took a look at how Disney was hiring four seasons, took a look at kind of a deep dive onto those companies, and one of the things I noticed, which was incredibly revealing, they weren't hiring the same way we were. They were doing it all upside down.
They essentially flipped the hiring pyramid completely upside down, and so followed that model, ended up using this new approach for our practice, and it worked so well that I had some friends who wanted me to do it for them. And then, et cetera, et cetera, jump forward. We're now in ten different healthcare professions. All essentially private practices and that type of environment.
And we specialize in finding a players and b plus players for these private practices around North America.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Wow. Well, that's a way to, you know, obviously you studied in medicine and then really pivot into the business world and become a leader there.
Excited for you and kind of mastering both worlds. So that's exciting. Tell us now, explain kind of how do you go about finding the best staff and what's just give us kind of the beginning of how you kick that process off.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah. For a private practice is straightforward. It all starts with a consultation call with our team. And the reason that's so critical is that we need to find out about your practice. This is not a one size fits all solution. This is customized. The type of people that we bring into your practice depend on your practice. So that starts off with a discussion on the phone or a Zoom type call. And we also streamline who you're looking to hire because a lot of docs, they want to hire somebody. You can do ten different things. In the old days, yeah, you could get a person who would do a whole bunch of different stuff. Nowadays, it has to be far more refined than that. So what our team does is they'll have that discussion and then they write the job description for the position or positions. We post it to over 20 different job boards, and immediately, immediately the applicants start coming in.
The way this works is that as the applicants come in, they get a text message within 5 seconds of applying for the job. And that's where they're asked to start. Our build my team process.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Love that. So I'm assuming that process, you're going to start intaking some of these things to really feel out if they're the right fit.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Yeah. What we focus on is nothing. The traditional experience approach. If you're hiring for experience, here's a tip for your listeners. If you're hiring for experience, it can only be for licensed positions, those we can't do anything about. But for an unlicensed position in healthcare, I will categorically tell you that the results you're going to get will be vastly better if you're hiring for natural strengths and talents and not experience. The kicker is trying to determine what those natural strengths and talents are, and that's what the build my team system automatically does. When you approach things this way, you end up with a person in the role who's an a player or a b player. They are at a completely different level than the warm heartbeat that we're so used to seeing in some of these positions.
And when you bring on these fantastic people to your team, your team changes, your culture changes, your ability to provide outstanding care changes. And I got to tell you, on the doctor side, you show up for work with a smile on your face day after day after day, and that is a colossal improvement.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: That's huge. And I'm sure that resonates with a lot of our physicians that are listening right now. Now tell us, what are kind of these key support staff that you see is really most needed? And kind of where in volume wise, what are you seeing that is really important?
[00:06:14] Speaker A: It could be as easy as a front desk person. You know, the assistants, billers, practice managers, let's say in I care, you've got some specific positions. In dentistry, you have specific positions, all of these types of things. Well, build. My team has created, essentially algorithms for what makes a terrific front desk person a terrific builder. You name the position, we've got this. This dialed in, and I. We're able to bring these people in with such a high level of certainty that everything's guaranteed. And what I mean by that is, on an average position in a private practice in North America, we can predict at approximately 97% accuracy that this person is going to work out long term for your practice. It's a completely different approach and a completely different level of certainty when you think in terms of bringing people in at that level.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: I'm assuming turnover is a big issue that a lot of practices face.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Sure is.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Do you have any stats around that? Kind of. What's a typical length of time that some of these support roles are there and how you both differ from that?
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you hear a sigh in my voice. Turnover is baked into the healthcare equation. There's nothing you can do about that. Extreme turnover and even moderate turnover are completely addressable using our approach.
The caveat there is that people in these positions tend not to be the primary breadwinner for their family. You know, maybe a practice manager, a little different, but technicians, secretaries, that type of thing. These are roles that a lot of times, folks will leave because the spouse is moving the. This that. You name the reason, but there will always be a level of turnover for these positions. What, Bill, my team does is minimize it, and it does a terrific job at minimizing it, because we're bringing these people in and asking them to be themselves all day long. This is not an incongruent role for them. They. They walk in the door. They've got natural talents and strengths for the particular position. They're they're being asked to fill. And when you have a person who's being paid to show up for work, be themselves, be them, their awesome self.
They don't understand a lot of times why their performance is so special. They don't get necessarily that, oh, they just might have replaced two people or sometimes even three people. And you say, well, how the heck is that possible? Well, I'm here to tell you that an A player will be vastly more productive than a C or D player. And the other thing, too, Stacey, is that when you have an A player on your team, they only want to work with a players.
They will tolerate B players, but they're gone. If you surround them with C or D players, they don't want to work with those people at all. Those folks don't have their act together in that role. It doesn't mean they're bad people. It's just a bad fit for them. And they're a C or D players natural strengths and talents. So when you start to approach your team with this type of mindset and the strengths and talents mindset instead of experience, what you notice is things in your practice get much, much better, and this can happen extremely quickly.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Love that. Now, tell me, are there strategies that you can deploy in terms of retaining these a and B players once obviously you found them and they're placed within your practice?
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a couple things. Like, for example, build my team will. We measure all kinds of things about these candidates. And so imagine a monster funnel where we're doing this on over 20 different job boards. So we get all kinds of people coming in. This isn't just posting a job on one job board and getting drips and drops of applicants. So we get a whole bunch more people into our process. And by doing that and keeping these a players and B players and recommending them to the practice when our entire secret sauce process is done, if you will, that alone changes the retention rate for these practices. So if you really want to look at and do a deep dive on why turnover is so high, the first thing I always lean on is you've got a couple people in a practice that are always fantastic, and the rest are usually carried at some level by those fantastic people.
The way you stop your turnover, you replace the C and D players. I know it's hard, but let me tell you, you're doing them a favor because they are in the wrong role for them. They're not happy showing up for work and being mediocre or even worse in their role. They will often dream of a different position where they can be a superstar, and those positions are out there. If they were to be in a natural fit for their strengths and talents. You approach things like that. You replace the D players, then you replace the C players. And if you can get a and B players on your team, you will have de facto solved this retention problem about as much as it can be solved in healthcare.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Tell us about, you know, you said the secret sauce, so obviously you're not going to give that away, but it sounds like you've developed an algorithm to kind of perform. So is this similar, like, is this a test that they'll take? You know, kind of give context to our audience? Is it like, I've taken a disk text, like those type of tests, or how does it work?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Oh, it's this.
What we tried when we started was a one test fits all scenario. And what we found out instead is imagine an orchestra where you've got a conductor, you've got all these different instruments. You don't have just one instrument playing like a soloist, essentially. That doesn't work. You need a combination of these things. So the first thing that we start off with is flat out asking the applicants to take an assessment. About 50% of them don't budge.
Stop and think about that for a second. We lose, intentionally lose about 50% of the applicants because you just asked them to do a something, to take an action of some sort. They want nothing to do with it. Those are folks that. Good riddance. They're out of the process because they would have wasted all your paper, all your printer ink, and all your time trying to go through those types of applicants. And so the next thing we do is we do a healthcare mindset assessment. They have to be the type of person that wants to take care of other people. There's a whole bunch of stuff surrounding that, and we measure their speed of learning. We're measuring all kinds of strengths and talents that these people have. I'll give you an example. One of the things we measure is stress tolerance. So you're in a busy practice. You are sitting, let's say, up at the front desk. It's an insurance based practice. So let's make it a little crazier. Let's make it a Medicaid practice. Now, you've got all kinds of people who do not understand their insurance. They will never understand their insurance, and they're just upset if they're asked for money because they're entitled to some level of care. Now, this is an extreme example, but the reason I use that example is, is that the person sitting at that front desk has to have a high stress tolerance. If they don't, you're not going to last two weeks. You might be lucky if you last two weeks. That's one of the things we measure. Now contrast that to a practice where it's more of a slower pace, more of a concierge type environment. Maybe they don't take insurance. Maybe the person can just sit there and have a pleasant experience. With most patients, most of the time, that requires a different type of person. And so this is just one example that I think all the listeners who are doing their hiring can relate to. Like, why do I keep losing these types of people? Well, chances are you're not measuring their strengths and talents and you're asking them to perform in a role that they're just not set up for in the first place.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. And even just describing the difference between those two environments, you can really see how you'd want to have the person that has the right skill set. And you're only going to uncover that with, like, you're saying some of these tests and finding that out before right now. Tell me, so what are some of the most common mistakes you do see physicians make when they're hiring their support staff?
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So the first pass of this is always something along the lines of, let's say, a disc test or one of the personality tests or otherwise. Now, there's a million of them, possibly more than that. They have some strengths, they have some weaknesses, etcetera. But usually what I see is that folks either aren't using an assessment process, or if they are, they're assessing something that's immaterial to the hiring process.
So let's say, for example, front desk, you are generally traditionally looking for somebody who has a big smile, nice and friendly, all those things.
Okay, understood. Let's approach this differently. In modern healthcare, a front desk position, you need to have the ability to interact with people, of course. But what I didn't hear in the first description is the ability to process high transaction volume, the ability to do umpteen number of things at once. I mean, let's face it, all you got to do, if you don't believe me, is grab a clipboard, go stand at your front desk, don't say a word, and write down all the things that your team is doing simultaneously. Now, if you're not measuring the ability to do even those types of things, you're going to set yourself up for failure. And I think the bigger picture, again, goes back to the.
With the assessments. You want to be measuring what they're naturally good at, because if you put a position. Sorry. If you put a person into a position where they are being themselves and they're doing what they're naturally good at, you will get a completely unbelievable result.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: That's what everybody wants. Okay, well, that's great advice. I love that. Now, tell me, I know that building a successful team often starts with the right leadership. What advice would you give physicians to lead their support staff effectively?
[00:17:03] Speaker A: So, I like the example of the bus.
Imagine your practice is essentially a bus. All right, so I'll use my practice as an example. Before we started this approach and we were using resumes, we would get people on the bus based upon what they said they were good at.
Okay, well, guess what, Stacey? Our bus crashed.
We had flat tires. The engine broke, overheated. I mean, this bus was a disaster. Right. Because we were banking on each of these people telling us what they're good at, what we did instead, and where we're at now. From a leadership standpoint, what my role is, is to provide the map.
I'm telling our team this is where we're going to go now, what their responsibility is to essentially get us there. I'm not involved in day to day nitpicky details or anything like that. I've got a terrific team. I trust them. My job is to provide that map as to the destination, as to where we're going to go, and it's to put guardrails on the road. So, for example, if you want to make this type of decision, you need to check with me first. If you want to make that type of decision. Absolutely. Go for it. And so by putting these guardrails on the road, it allows the team the autonomy to drive the bus.
What the team also does, because I've got some terrific, like, really terrific people on this team, is they select the other members of the team. Now build my team, does the process, does the hiring, but they make the decision as to who's coming on board. I don't make decisions for hiring, for our practice at all. I have absolutely zero to do with it.
What that does is it reinforces the fact that, a, I trust the team, b, they have to deal with these people if they're going, and this is performance based, if they're going to maximize the growth of our practice, maximize the care that we provide and how happy our patients are. And by the way, that's a, that's part of the comp plan for them. If they're going to do all of that, they need to bring on terrific people.
So we're not bringing on cousin Susie because Aunt Flo decided we really needed to offer her a job. It doesn't work like that. They want people who can perform in the roles.
They're essentially getting these people onto the bus. Now, the last part of the story is simple. They have to be in the right seats on the bus. And this is one of the shocking statistics that completely floored me about applicants to jobs in our practice.
It's almost exactly 50% of the applicants don't end up in the job that they applied for in our practice, and that's 50%. Half of people, Stacey, apply for job x and end up getting job y. Well, why is that? It's because they don't understand their own strengths and talents.
And what our team does is they'll gently say to this person, well, I know you applied for x. However, we think you'd be a much better fit for y. And the reason being is that that's what your natural strengths and talents are, etcetera. And they almost always say yes because they aren't hell bent on the type of job. What they're looking for is to be in a stable position, stable paycheck. I mean, the checks aren't going to bounce from doctors offices.
They like to work in an office environment, sit at a computer, have something wonderful called air conditioning and things like that.
So when they're in that type of position and we can get these team members on the right people on the bus, a and b players on the bus, get them in the right seats on the bus, and then my leadership team drives the bus.
What ends up happening? And this is hard to believe, but the results that you can get as a practice are nothing short of stupendous.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Tell me, when you get the applicants to the final stage and they've gone through your process, what advice do you give physicians at that point to pick the right person? Are you giving them an option between a and b, or how does that work?
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Well, the process is completely automated up to a point. When these candidates all go through our automated system, at the end, our software, the outcome is literally a thumbs up. Those people that get the thumbs up, we know that they can do the job. We know that they would be fantastic at it. What we do, in addition to that is a video interview. So our team does a video interview and we don't care what they look like, we don't care if they're male or female, pink, brown, purple, doesn't matter. What we're looking for is how do they answer the questions that we're asking less. So what the answers are, but how, how are they going to represent your practice? There's a ton of intangibles in that, in that process. And so once that's all done, and we have team members who internally, who rate all of these videos, the video interviews, what they'll, they're going to do is use that to make the best decision for the finalist candidates to send over to the practice. So we send over a couple of finalist candidates, and at that point, the doc, and by the way, they've got about an hour's worth of work into this. At this point, the doc, the practice themselves. That's how streamlined this is. So the doc or the practice manager, whomever, will make the final decision based upon who they think would be best for the practice, because they're in the building all day long, they know from these candidates this person might be a little bit better fit for our culture, that type of thing. And a lot of times, they see the hire, too. Like you. You've sent me two superstar, fantastic people. Yeah, I think we can use both. Boom.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: That sounds like the best outcome.
Two all stars, right? Tell us, what is a piece of actionable advice that you would give physicians to improve their hiring process that can lead to immediate impact, to change their practice? Obviously, using build my team. But what is something outside of that, that just from all of your experience, and obviously, you're so well versed in this, what would you recommend?
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Well, there's one single point, and I don't have to think about this. It's decisiveness.
Docs love to maul a decision to death, and I'm here to tell you that those days are over. Interviewing by committee, multiple interviews. I mean, we used to do this. We would bring people back for two, three interviews. The days are gone. They're dead. Absolutely dead. They will never come back. What the doc has to do, or the practice team has to do, is they have to make a decision based upon, in the normal hiring process, based upon completely inadequate information, which docs hate doing. I hate doing it. We all do. Through the build my team process, we provide what's called an insight report, which gives you oodles of information about these candidates, and you have something in front of you that you can actually look quantitative data and make these decisions based on. But you have to be decisive, and here's why. The A players and the B players, they are not sticking around waiting for you to make a decision. They've applied for umpteen number of jobs, and whoever gets back to them first, I'll give you an example. In our practice, our build my team is 24/7 so these candidates can wake up in the morning at 05:00 a.m. and receive information from our system. So our practice manager, as soon, and that goes for us as a client as well. As soon as the information about one of these candidates comes in, she essentially stops what she's doing, reaches out to the candidate, and gets them scheduled for an interview. So if she wakes up in the morning to a candidate for a position, we're trying to get that candidate in that day, later that morning, early afternoon. The push is always that day. Why do we do that? Because this is inconvenient on the practices side. Why do we do that immediately? That candidate knows, a, we're not messing around, b, we're decisive, c, we want to talk to them and D, we're ready to go. Now, if you can pull that off with an a player, you're going to land that person if it's possible to land. Okay, sometimes there are situations where it's not, but you're going to do that.
Now, imagine you get back to them three, four days later.
Hey, we're thinking about bringing you in for an interview. How's three weeks from now at 07:00 p.m. after I'm done? Patients, it might be a little later than that.
You know, Tuesdays tend to run a little late and boom, gone. The person's gone. They know you're not serious about this, and I'm not coming down on anybody with this discussion. What I'm trying to do is provide something that you can do immediately in your hiring process, because the way that we used to do things just doesn't work anymore. What that will do is attract a person who has nothing better to do on that Tuesday night after you're done patient care, three weeks out, they don't have other job offers in the pipeline. They're desperate. You're going to attract by doing that a C or a D player to your team, and that will cause constant chaos until it's rectified.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Great advice, and I think that is something that you wouldn't think off the top of your head. You're kind of scheduling around your own schedule and showing that urgency to somebody that could be a great optimal fit makes a lot of sense. So thank you for sharing that.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Yeah. In fact, it's so much of a big deal, Stacey, that one of the very few conditions that we ask of our clients, that's the first one. The only thing that comes to the top of my head is that they have to get back to the candidates within 48 hours, and almost all of them get back to them immediately or very close to it, because once they understand why the why behind this, you realize, okay, I got to stop what I'm doing and do that. And you're only talking about a text or a phone call. It's not a big deal. But that's how big of a deal it is for our internal team that it's actually required.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Makes perfect sense now that you explain it and give the why. So thank you for that. Now, tell us, anyone that's listening today, they might be saying, okay, how can I bring on, you know, build my team? How does the process work? Tell us, start to finish and how they can potentially use your service.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Yep, it's pretty straightforward. You go to Buildmyteam.com and schedule a consultation. One of our team members will hop on the call with you at a time that's convenient.
And what our team is going to do is ask you all kinds of questions about your practice. It's a discussion because we want to know, first off if we can help you. And I know that sounds ridiculous.
This isn't a sales pitcher. Otherwise, we want nothing to do with a practice that we can't help, that is directly from me through the entire team.
On the other side of the equation, if we can help you, we will bend over backwards to help your practice. Because in our perspective, the better the team members are that we can bring onto your team, the better quality of care you're going to provide. And honestly, the better doctor you're going to be because you're not going to be upset, miserable, distracted, wondering how you're going to make your car payment, your mortgage payment, because your front desk secretary just walked out on you, etcetera, etcetera. And everybody listening to this, who's in private practice has had something like this happen to you.
So when we can help these folks get these team members on our role, I mean, we get a tremendous amount of satisfaction. I'll give you an example. You familiar with Slack? You know the software? We all use it, love it, hate it, etcetera. We have a channel in within build my team called Bang the Gong Gong g o n g. Like one of those big instrument type things. And the reason we have that is every single time we get somebody hired around North America. It's posted in our bang the Gong channel. We celebrate it internally in the company because we just changed somebody's life. We got somebody who was working in a position they weren't happy with. You name it, and we brought them into a position where they get to be themselves all day long and get complimented and rewarded for that. So that's just the internal culture of our company, and that's what we love doing.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Love that. So it sounds easy. So they go to your website, they can sign?
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Have a consultation. How long does that take? I know these are very busy, you know, physicians. So how, how many hours will this whole, you know, all in typically take? One.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah. The consult's running around 30 minutes or less. Okay. And what our team wants to know is every. They want to know all the skeletons in the closet. The more honest the doc can be, and I know it's hard, the more vulnerable the doc can be, the better the outcome will be. We've seen it all. We've run into every conceivable HR atrocity that's out there. But you got about 30 minutes into that. And then from there, there's a weekly update from our team members with. It's an email, essentially, and then we send over the finalist candidates when they're ready.
And as I said earlier, as soon as those come in. And sometimes it can be extraordinarily quickly. As soon as those come in, the doc and the practice owner has to.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Jump on it, typically, what are you seeing in terms of, you know, when somebody on boards you to. When they will have these positions filled?
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it totally depends on the position.
Usually in the three to four week range is where a lot of them fall. That's kind of the median of the. No, I shouldn't say the median, the bell curve. It's a little earlier than that, but that's where most of the positions are filled by. Our all time record was a doc who reached out on Sunday.
His job went live Monday morning. We had a person go all the way through the process. By Tuesday, she was in for an interview. Wednesday, and Thursday morning was her first when she started the job. So that's our all time record. That's not something to be expected by any stretch of the imagination, but it's usually just a couple of weeks. And you get the supremely high quality person into your practice in that timeframe. So sometimes docs want it a little bit faster and sometimes it comes faster.
But the key point there is you get an a player or a b player, and it only takes that long.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Right now in the marketplace, are you seeing that there are a lot of candidates? Is the market kind of widening, softening? What would you, you know, just as an overall indicator to our audience?
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Well, I think this can be compared to pre Covid, and post Covid is really where the defining difference was. Pre Covid, we had a ton of applicants now anywhere between 30, 40% less applicants. The entry level labor market for healthcare was routed. I mean, it was. It was cleaned out with COVID A lot of people just decided they don't want to work anymore, made lifestyle changes, and that's a whole different discussion. But the only way to combat that is to simply pour more people into the top of this funnel. And there are all kinds of people who want to work out there. There are all kinds of people who choose to go to an office instead of staying at home.
We talk about remote work a lot. Well, there's a ton of folks who don't want anything to do with that. They enjoy people interactions. They want to get out of the house. Their spouse might be driving them nuts, or kids might be driving them right. So what we have to do is make sure there's as many people being starting our process as possible. And that, I think, has been enormously helpful for our clients versus a practice trying to hire on their own.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Great insights. I want to thank you so much, Doctor Neal, for your time and all of these really valuable insights and actions that doctors can take immediately to help with their staff hiring. And tell us just one more time how they can get a hold of you and your team.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's you go to buildmyteam.com. and one thing I wanted to leave everybody with is that this sounds, in a lot of ways, to be too good to be true. And if you're focused on hiring for experience, it most certainly is too good to be true. If you're open to the approach that I've described of hiring for natural strengths and talents, then this is what you should expect. Categorically expect it. We have an incredibly well refined process. We do one thing over and over and over again. So we're essentially doing the same thing for years and just getting better and better at it. And our team absolutely loves to help practices do exactly this. That's why they're brought onto our team in the first place.
It makes a miserable process fun.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: We like when you can turn things that aren't the best, most enjoyable into fun experiences.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: One other thing I'm really curious about, because we obviously place a lot of physicians in rural communities is this. Can you help regardless of where a physician's practice may be, and are there any differences, obviously, with rural versus metro areas?
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Well, there are differences. This entire process was born and raised in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. Good luck finding a more rural area than where. Where this started.
In the cities, you have oodles, more applicants. One of the differences there is geography. If you're expecting somebody to drive a long ways in a city for a position, it doesn't work. And that's. I'll give you one of our secret sauce questions. We ask the. In an automated way, we ask the candidates how far they are from the practice and if they're. And that varies for everything. So, for example, you can be 20 minutes from the practice where I'm located. But if you're in midtown Manhattan, 20 minutes is an eternity. You're going to pass a thousand places to get a job in that 20 minutes, whereas where I live, you might. You might pass two or three.
So it all depends on the practice and where they're located.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Great. So this. It's universal, but like you're saying, there's going to be nuances to, depending on the population sizes and.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: Right. And that all comes in that initial discussion with the practice owner as well, or the practice manager.
There's pros and cons to each, but the bottom line is it works in urban and it works in rural and everything in between. We just handle things slightly differently for each environment.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Doctor Neal. Appreciate your time.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Thank you, Stacey.
Thanks so much.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Thank you to all of our listeners.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: If you would like to be notified when new episodes air, make sure to.
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[00:37:31] Speaker B: Guest, please go to pacificcompanies.com.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: Thank you.
You our.
