Episode 183 | Recruiting Strategies to Find Your Ideal Clinician

Welcome back to another episode. Today I want to talk about recruiting strategies for finding your ideal clinician. And so, as many of you know, I talk a lot about how to figure out who your ideal clinician is. If you don’t yet know who your ideal clinician is Google ideal clinician, the group practice exchange, and you’ll find my ideal clinician worksheet that can help you figure out who that ideal therapist is to bring into your group practice. So once you figure that out, come back to this episode, and we’re gonna be talking about how to find that ideal clinician. And today’s podcast episode is specifically around the research of figuring out where to look for recruiting that person.

So this is a recruiting episode, we’re talking about where to research and find that ideal clinician. And that’s the step before actually doing any sort of interviews, just recruiting. So when thinking about really, the key to finding your ideal clinician depends on a few things, and one is your geographic location. Another is who your ideal clinicians are. Another is going to be the time of year because candidates selections on job board sites are going to vary throughout the year, and also who you know.

So I want you to start by asking yourself, what are the most prominent job board sites that are in your geographic area, depending on where you’re at in the US, or in whatever country you might be listening to this episode in, the prominent job boards are going to vary by location. And so where you’re at, the best way to do this, to figure this out is to Google what an ideal clinician would be Googling, to find your job listing, and see what those top job posting sites are in your area that are popping up on your search results. And again, depending on the season, depending on the time of the year, you’re going to want to do this throughout the year, because different prominent job boards are going to be popping up at different times of the year. And those top sites in the search engine are likely going to be providing more candidates for the position that you’re looking to fill.

Okay. So to start off, you want to Google what you think your ideal therapist or your ideal clinician is going to Google to look for a job, if they’re wanting to look for your type of position that you’re offering, right, and see what comes up at the top. And those are likely going to be great initial places to start putting your ad out there. And then where would your ideal clinician be looking for a job. If you’re looking to hire new grads, it might be a college job board. It might be local therapist Facebook groups, it might be from past colleagues from previous workplaces or other therapist circles that you’re a part of. It might be specific job board websites, like indeed, or Monster or LinkedIn or glass door, all those type of places. It could be referrals from your current therapist team, which is my favorite. I always feel like the people that we have on our teams, if we love the team members that we have, the assumption is that we all surround ourselves with people who are similar to us. And so if our teams are great, asking our own team, do they have people that they feel like would be a good fit, are likely going to be the best candidates. And then also some networking events can be helpful in finding new new people that might be interested in working in your business.

Another thing to think about is like, are you an inclusive business? Are there BIPOC, LGBTQ or other marginalized folks that are searching for jobs in your area? Are there places that you’re searching for therapists that those places are inclusive themselves, and this is where it gets really important, you know, certain job posting or job boards are less inclusive than others. And so it’s really important if being an inclusive practice is a value to you like it is to mine, then you have to make sure that you’re being aware of where are the best places to be looking for staff that has diversity, right? And certain job sites have less diversity in them, which will not help you in creating a diverse work workforce in your business. And so thinking about what is a value to you as a business as a group practice owner is going to also guide you in how you search for and recruit the ideal therapists for your position.

Another thing to think about is, are you looking for a specific specialty, because there’s a lot of specialties that have their own certification process, which means They have their own websites and often might have their own directory or job boards themselves. And so these are the, in the research phase, the really important things that you want to be thinking about to make sure that you’re likely to find an actual ideal clinician. And that’s why it’s so important to not just go out there and throw a job description on all of the major, you know, job posting sites, and wait for someone to come because you’ll get either no candidates, or you’ll get a million candidates that aren’t your ideal clinician. And that’s why it’s so important to make sure that you know, your ideal clinician first.

And then second, know what your values are in your business to make sure that the people that you’re or the places that you’re looking to recruit, that though they value or that your values align with the values of that recruiting, or job board, right? For the recruiting process, in the research process, to figuring out where you’re going to recruit, I think it’s one of the most important steps and feels like the least thought out step that businesses take. Honestly, most people figure out who they want, semi what their ideal clinician is, make a job description, and just throw it out, throw it out there on all the job boards and hope for the best, right. And then once they get the interview that’s when they start to, you know, do the work at making sure that who they hire, can mold into what they’re looking for.

And that’s really a backwards way of looking at it. The most important step is really the research phase. Because where you’re looking for your ideal therapist makes all the difference in actually bringing in someone who aligns with your values, who is going to most likely be a good fit for your business. And so I hope that this episode helps you to realize that you really need to spend just as much time that you spend interviewing and onboarding people in the actual research phase of where you’re looking for people.
At the end of the day, my most successful way that I go about it in my business is based off of our businesses values. And what our ideal clinicians are, are literally using our current team and asking them regularly, hey, is there anyone you think would be an amazing fit at our business? Who you’ve worked with before? Or who you know? And if so, reach out to them and tell them to send the resume over to so and so. Right? That’s our number one, we get the best fitting therapist that way.

The second way that is really successful for us as well, is by reaching out to places in LinkedIn, oh, my gosh, I’m blanking out LinkedIn is doing personal messaging with people on LinkedIn versus like putting a job offer out there or an ad out on, you know, LinkedIn, indeed, goo monster, all of that is actually doing research and like going through people that are on LinkedIn, and seeing what their job history is, do they have the you know, essentially, LinkedIn, their profiles are almost like a mini resume. And so we go through that and we see are there people who have the experience or the specialty that we’re looking for, and then we reach out to them personally. And I find that the personal outreach is a great way to get someone to feel like we’re doing our work at five looking for someone versus just throwing it out there and saying, you know, free for all, anyone who’s interested, you can just come and apply.

And then we’ll start screening. Initially we’re essentially doing a screening process by doing the outreaching, because there’s certain things about that person that we already know are a good fit for our business, before even meeting with them. And then we do an initial screener, where we talk about what our needs are, and what their needs are, before we do an actual interview to see if you know our needs and their needs align. And those two things tend to be our greatest source of bringing in the best or most ideal clinicians, but it’s going to be different for everyone.

And the bottom line is you really want to make sure that you’re spending time making sure that your research part of this is getting covered and not just washed away by throwing ads out everywhere. Because you’re likely going to look very generic, and you’re likely not going to get the most ideal clinicians and it’s going to take longer for you to find who you need. So I hope this episode was helpful and I’ll see you next week!