job search Archives - RDH Resumes and Career Guidance

Finding Quality Offices and Aligning Yourself with Them

August 22, 2016 By Doug Perry, Dental Hygiene Resume Coach

Do you like working with quality or successful co-workers and employers? Who wouldn’t, right? I mean the opposite has no appeal. But how do you find and align yourself with them?

First, you have to identify them. And as many of you know, that can be the hardest part. There’s a sifting process you have to go through if you want to land in a quality office with great employer. It means you have to accept that not every job opening is acceptable or worth your time.

There are three phases to sifting out the crappy employers and find the quality ones.

Questions Phase

If you really aren’t that satisfied with your current employer, then put down on paper what your ideal is for a quality employer. Is it an office that’s five minutes from your house? Is it a certain pay range? What about benefits? Co-worker or boss relationships – what do they look like? What’s your ideal approach to serving patients? Do you need to be challenged in some way?

There are lots of questions and ways to evaluate what you want – I couldn’t possibly come up with a checklist that’s right for everyone. So take some time to ask yourself lots of questions, but focus on your pain points or things that bother you.

You should also ask yourself if there are things you are willing to compromise on from that list. Ranking them from most to least important to help with that.

Discovery Phase – Part 1

Now that you have a good list of what you want from an office or employer, it’s time to find them. I would begin by listing out all the offices you have experience with from the past, be they temp jobs, permanent jobs, or even jobs you have interviewed at or are familiar with because of friends or other circumstances.

With that list of offices, how do each one of them stack up in terms of your ideal office – those questions you prioritized earlier? Where are they strongest and where might they be lacking? You may get the sense from doing that that no office is perfect. And that’s okay, it shouldn’t discourage you. Frankly, it may be true and consider, too, that offices sometimes morph over time – people and cultures change. Sometimes one person leaves and the entire office is a much happier place.

The next part of this phase is for you to determine a strategy to get yourself out and into other offices – either by temping, interviewing, or networking with people from other offices at conferences and seminars. Don’t just go to conferences to get CE hours – if you do that you are missing out one of the most important parts of the conference for your career. You should come away having met new people – and I would focus on quality encounters with people, not quantity. One great contact can be way better than 100 forgettable ones.

One other strategy is to go online and start looking up the offices that are in your target area. Make some notes there from things you observe. What seems to be their philosophy? Do they appear different than most offices? What can you learn from reading the bios of the staff or employer? Start following them on social media and take note of things you learn from their postings – they often give a lot away about their culture and personality by the things they share.

The long and short of it is, you are only going to find a quality office and successful employer if you go looking – it’s pretty rare when they come looking for you.

Discovery Phase – Part 2

The other important part of this phase is to begin keeping a log of who you meet, what offices you learn more about, small or big details – whatever you find helpful. This information is what you would use to determine if that office is worth keeping a closer eye on.

As part of this, I would start even ranking the offices you might want to work at. Not a best-to-worst type of ranking, but rather a ranking of classes – a class of offices that look really appealing to a class of offices that you want to stay away from.

Marketing Phase

Granted, those first phases can take time and work – and they should be on-going (you are never really done). But once you have some good information, you can really focus your energy next on marketing yourself to the offices that really matter and ignore the ones that don’t. All the time you put in upfront will now save you from making potentially big mistakes in marketing yourself to bad offices or employers – mistakes that could cost you untold time and money, not to mention discouragement!

Now you can begin to deploy some of the many different marketing techniques I talk about each week, from postcards, resumes, cover letters, websites, LinkedIn profiles, emailing, thank you letters, interview strategies, and on and on. But best of all you can target those activities and really focus on making them as meaningful as possible. When your marketing effort or field of candidates is too large it’s harder to get that intense focus that can make you really stand out in the minds of quality employers.

Now the Secret Weapon

Okay, one final tip to help you align yourself with successful or quality dental offices. It’s called GRATITUDE!

I know what you are wondering – what does gratitude have to do with making yourself more attractive to quality employers?

Turns out, a study published by the Templeton Foundation indicates that 94% of women and 96% of men agree that “a grateful boss is more likely to be successful” as compared to 18% who felt a grateful boss can be viewed as “week.” Gratitude is perceived by almost everyone as hugely important to success!

What does that mean for you? It means that to align yourself with a quality employer, they want to see that YOU have gratitude. Amazing! Now, there are for sure other qualities you need to display, but it really shouldn’t be that hard for you to show that you are a gracious person, right? Anyone can do that, but not everyone does – so she who does gets advantage over those who show less or no gratitude.

So how do you show gratitude? Hopefully this is instinctive for you, but if it isn’t work on some different ways you can show it in your job seeking materials (especially cover letter), and most importantly in your job interviews. That’s where they can see and feel it from you – that’s one way you can win them over!

When you first meet for your interview – thank them.“You probably have many candidates to consider, so thank you for including me.”
When you talk about your experiences, give people kudos or credit (not just all you). “I owe a lot of my success to the hard work the front office, assistants, and boss put in.”
When you leave the interview, thank them again. “It was great to meet you – thank you for giving me the chance to share with you my experiences.”
After the interview, send a thank you letter. “I appreciate the opportunity it was to learn more about your office and the great work you do.”

These kinds of statements, even though they have nothing to do with your skills, create a positive buzz or energy about you that is hard to miss. If you leave an employer with that kind of feeling, it will be very difficult to dismiss your candidacy or not want to help you succeed in landing a great dental hygiene job.

Getting a Great Picture for your Job Search

July 11, 2016 By Doug Perry, Dental Hygiene Resume Coach

I get a lot of questions about pictures for resumes, postcards, LinkedIn profiles, and personal websites. Mind you, I am no expert on photography, but I definitely have some recommendations after having worked on hundreds of dental hygiene job hunting materials – most of which include at least one picture.

The best pictures are almost always those taken by a professional, however you don’t necessarily have to hire someone to take a great picture. I have seen plenty of DIY shots that were more than adequate. So here are some tips to help you come up with a great picture to use in your dental hygiene job search.

Lighting

If you are taking a professional picture (presumably with a friend), one of the most important factors is lighting. The best way to get great lighting is to go outdoors as natural light will give you a quick and inexpensive way to get better results than you can get indoors.

Background

I often see a lot of pictures come in taken against a white wall and that just doesn’t create a very interesting shot. So find a spot where you can incorporate an interesting background that offers nice contrast and colors. Trees and bushes adjacent to a brick or stucco building work great, but try several different combinations.

Positioning

There’s also a tendency to position your head and shoulders straight on, square with the camera. But it looks much better to pose a little and there are lots of ways to do this, so try several things.

For example, continue to look at the camera but turn your body/shoulders to the right or left of the camera just a little. You could even try tilting your head slightly in a way that feels nature to give the picture a little more personality or uniqueness.

Smile

Obviously, it’s important to smile. But practice your best smile in the mirror, try to capture several looks of happy, playful, interested, and confident. Then replicate those the best you can when your picture is taken.

Forced and overly-dramatic smiles never come across as genuine and can actually harm your credibility and professionalism, so keep it real, natural, relaxed and comfortable.

Wardrobe

I tell hygienists who need a resume or postcard picture, to try be sure and wear something they would wear to a job a job interview, but also have their lab coat handy for some shots with that. You may even want to accessorize with a pair of loupes around your neck or maybe clipboard. This type of a shot helps the employer more clearly envision you as a hygienist working for them.

For those who are doing more extensive professional photography (mostly for a personal website), you’ll want to also get some casual photos and some of you on the job, interacting with patients and co-workers. Obviously, you’ll need permission from those in the pictures with you, but those can make for some fantastic shots that really sell you as a professional.

Best Judgment

I could of course go much deeper into all of these areas and even talk about other things such as hair, makeup, and jewelry. Best thing to do is use your best judgement, keeping in mind you want to create a look of confidence and one where they can clearly see you as someone who will care for their patients. If you are in doubt, err on the conservative side and get feedback from your family and friends.

Summary

Using a picture of you in your job search materials is a very personal decision. You should never feel forced to do it – there are ways to make yourself stand out as a great candidate for a job without it.

However, there’s lots of evidence in my experience that using your picture does create an instant and higher level of trust initially (it’s part of your personal brand) and it’s very apparent that those who do it are getting more interviews, and that of course leads to more job opportunities.

“Did I Get the Job?” … (crickets)

April 25, 2016 By Doug Perry, Dental Hygiene Resume Coach

Probably the most challenging part of searching for a dental hygiene job is waiting to hear the outcome after an interview. This week I have a few tips of things you can do, while you wait it out.

Mentally Move On

My biggest piece of advice is to finish your interview, make note of some things you would do different in the next interview, do some of the things I mention further down in this article, then move on as though you won’t get it. I know it sounds deflating when you are so hopeful and excited to get an offer, but sometimes employers can really drag their feet on decisions like this.

Sometimes it’s for legitimate reasons, often tied to some sort of uncertainty within their office and completely un-related to you or the position itself. Or, it could also be that they want to take their time and interview lots of people.

The thing is, you will usually never know why they are taking forever to contact you. And the more you think about it the less confident and more anxious you become – which has an adverse impact on your job search. So keep searching for jobs, keep sending out resumes, keep networking… in general keep busy!

Thank You Note

I’ve written about this several times, so I won’t go into a lot of detail (if you want more on it click here). Always, always, always send a thank you note following your job interviews. It’s professional and it gives you a leg up because most won’t do it.

It also makes you more memorable and, if you aren’t their first choice, you will be an easy second choice if the first hygienist they offer the job to passes for a different job/offer. There are even some scenarios where the employer hires someone, they quickly don’t work out, and the second choice gets hired.

Post-Interview Summary

I’ve also written in the past about a post-interview summary document. This is very similar to your resume, except that it’s more brief and highlights things you learned from your interview. Things they seemed to want to emphasize or things you noticed about the office (equipment or culture) that make you think you are a great fit.

Click here if you would like to learn more about this document (including a free template you can download).

Call Them!

You have to be very careful about this – there’s an acceptable timing associated with it that you can’t violate or you risk sounding annoyed or desperate (or both).

Hopefully, in the interview, you learned of the time-frame for their decision – if they don’t offer it up ask them before leaving. Always wait for that length of time before you call, but also add an additional three business days for good measure. Then it’s safe to call them.

When you call, in a very professional tone, inform them that you are checking in on the status of the open dental hygiene position. After you receive their response, thank them for their time and hang up. They won’t tell you anything more than they are able so there’s no point in trying to sell yourself further or pry more details out of them.

Some Additional Things

I’ve heard many tales of interesting things people have done following an interview to get the job – everything from bringing cookies to the office to renting a billboard with the person’s name and picture on it within view of the office.

Some things seem crazy and others more practical, but a lot of them have worked! So think outside the box and calibrate your risk meter as to whether you feel it’s worth it or not and act accordingly.

Just keep it tasteful and professional – avoid any levels of creepiness – and hopefully your wait for a great dental hygiene job will be short.

How to Expand Your Dental Hygiene LinkedIn Network

April 4, 2016 By Doug Perry, Dental Hygiene Resume Coach

LinkedIn is becoming a very powerful job hunting tool, mostly because hygienists are learning how to expand and grow their network of connections.

Most connections on LinkedIn don’t just happen. They require some effort on your part, but it’s surprisingly easy. And unlike Facebook, connecting on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you have to necessarily know the person to reach out.

LinkedIn May be considered a social media, but it’s more like a professional network because people are using it the same way they use in-person networking. They are creating connections with industry peers and thus building a virtual professional network. They could be colleagues in your city or even in a completely different country – you get to decide!

What are Connections?

Connections are akin to being friends with someone on Facebook – they are added to a list of people you can communicate with directly and receive updates on things they are doing in LinkedIn. This could be work anniversaries and birthdays, changes to their employment situation, updates of their profile and things they post or announce.

When you search for people, LinkedIn shows you if you are connected with people listed in your search results. If you are connected with someone, it will show you a small “1st” tag when searching for someone or on their profile page. Often you will see “2nd” and “3rd” tags. The “2nd” tag means the person is a connection of your connection (friend of a friend, so to speak), and “3rd” means they are connected to your “2nd” level connections. This is helpful because that’s very often how people network for jobs – you know someone who has a friend who is looking to hire.

There is also a “Group” tag that will show you if someone belongs to the same group you do. LinkedIn has lots of groups – including several for Dental Hygienists. Click here to join the largest of them all, one that I help manage called “Dental Hygienists” (currently more than 17,000 members).

Also, you can search for people by geographic area and their job title – which is very helpful to connecting with people you don’t know.

Step 1: Connect with People You know

Start by connecting with your friends, family and acquaintances (including former co-workers, employers, and people you went to hygiene school with). They will be the basis for finding the 2nd and 3rd tier network, which can be your most powerful. All of them have networks of their own and may be connected with someone that would prove to be a great connection for you (ie dentists and other dental office personnel).

If you already have an account and are connected with some of them – keep searching for others. Connections who know, like, and trust you can also provide testimonials and endorsements for you that provide great third-party validation of how awesome you are. Testimonials are written tributes your connections can write and post about you on your profile, while endorsements can be made about certain skills you identify in your profile. Your connections will be asked periodically to endorse whether you are great at “Patient Education” if that’s something you identify as a skill, and those endorsements will stack up in your profile.

Step 2: Define Your Target Offices

This almost goes without saying but evaluate the geographic area you are able to worth within and create a list of potential offices you could work at. Having done this several times for hygienists, I can tell you it’s usually between 75 and 200 offices. There are some who have much more in major metro areas and others who live in rural communities who have much fewer.

Knowing who you could potentially work for is really helpful in your efforts to do a lot of things – send postcards, do drop-in visits, and keeping track of who you have interviewed for or who you may have a connection with outside of LinkedIn.

But it will also help you start connecting with people from those offices through LinkedIn. You can of course search in Google for this yourself, or you can also hire a virtual assistant through upwork.com to create that list for you – they usually will charge you about $20 to do this and it can save you hours and hours of searching.

Step 3: Connecting with People You Don’t Know

Not everyone has a LinkedIn account, but a lot do and many are pretty active on LinkedIn or at least responsive to a message they get through it.

From your list of target offices, narrow it down to your top 10 – often these are ones that are closest to where you live or that you have some sort of connection to (you have friends or neighbors that go there or you know someone that works there). Then search, on LinkedIn, for the doctors and others who work in those offices. When you find a match, click on the Connect button.

There’s a default message LinkedIn automatically puts in there. You can use that if you wish, but I would consider creating your own. Be honest in your message, tell them you are seeking employment (temporary and/or permanent) and that you are particularly interested in their office and tell them why. Keep your message to about 30-40 words – really short.

If at all possible, include something that connects you to them already. For example, maybe you have a friend who’s neighbor works there, or maybe you have neighbors who go there for dental cleanings. Tell them that – that’s hard for an employer to ignore.

Not everyone will accept your connection – don’t let that discourage you because this is a game of numbers and you just have to keep after it. Keep building those connections because it only takes one good one to make the whole effort worth it. And you never know when the work you are doing now will pay off big time in a few years.

Step 4: Keep Reaching Out

Once you have reached out to the top 10 list, expand it by 10 more. Just keep trying to grow your connections with people. But do it in smaller bites so you don’t get discouraged or give up because it seems too overwhelming. I would also not try and do all of this within one day or even a week. This is a long-game strategy that you want to engage in regularly over the period of your entire career, same as you would in-person networking.

Step 5: Thank and Help Them

When you do land a connection (you’ll get notice when someone accepts) – thank them and offer to help them with their career goals. That’s the heart of networking. You help them, they’ll feel the need to help you. You could even suggest they join any one of the many dental hygiene groups that exist on LinkedIn.

Step 6: Let Others Find YOU

Several weeks ago I showed you how to customize your LinkedIn address so that it’s really simple and easy for people to type in, click here to read more about that. But once you do that, put a link to your profile in the signature line of all your e-mails (not just when you apply for jobs). Let everyone you e-mail know how to connect with you by LinkedIn.

Same goes with your business cards. If you don’t have a set, get a set and put your LinkedIn profile address on there, too.

Summary

LinkedIn is a great job hunting tool – click here if you need my help setting up or updating your LinkedIn profile. Take the time to create a profile and make it as complete as possible. More than 90% of all employers admit they will “Google” the names of those they are considering for a job interview. One of the highest search results will almost always be a person’s LinkedIn profile. That gives you a great opportunity to reinforce who you are with them which is one more way to land a great dental hygiene job.

Increase Patient Compliance and… Find a Job

January 11, 2016 By Doug Perry, Dental Hygiene Resume Coach

Each week I share the best job-finding strategies. This week is no different, but it will also help you help your patients.

One of the most powerful persuasion techniques used by expert negotiators and influencers comes down to two simple questions you can ask when confronted with those all-to-common self-defeating statements you hear from patients, friends and family, and even yourself.

Do these statements sound familiar:

“It’s impossible to find a job, there are too many hygienists,” or
“There’s no way I am going to get hired because I…,”

Or, from patients:

“I’ll never be good at flossing because I…,” or
“I can’t afford that treatment plan.”

The art of talking a patient or yourself into believing doesn’t consist of giving them a bunch of affirming statements – as good as those are. A vote of confidence like, “You can do this,” or “I believe in you,” are nice and good things to say, but they aren’t overly effective at leading a person to change.

Instead, warm them up with a short affirmation and then go right into the first of two simple questions (in this order):

“Do you believe it would make a difference in your life?”

Wait for the response, which would almost inevitably be, “Yes,” then ask the next question:

“What would make it possible?”

The word “yes” isn’t just a simple response – it’s actually a very powerful word all professional negotiators seek to get from the person they are influencing early on and often during the conversation. “Yes,” puts them on the same page as you – it gets them on your team. It’s a small, yet powerful commitment from them.

Once you have them on your team, you can begin to unravel the closed thinking that those “impossible” statements reveal. That second question begins to move a person from thinking “there’s no way” to “there’s a chance.” And then can begin a serious discussion about what conditions and actions would or could be taken to change things.

Depending on how hostile or snarky you or your patient are about the question, you should prepare yourself for this kind of response from them (or yourself):

“If I had a million dollars I could afford postcards – okay, then maybe I could find a job.”

Or…

“If you were standing next to me every night telling me to floss, then I would do it.”

Let me assure you, these are common responses to the second question. Really, they are throwing it out there as a last-ditch response they think you can’t match… except you can.

Here’s what you say:

“So if I have enough money, then I could afford the postcards and that would help me land a job.”
“So if I write you a little note to put in your bathroom, it will help you remember to floss?”

Basically, you’re acknowledging their core belief, but not the ridiculous features of that belief so that you can engage with them (or yourself) on a more rational level. This can lead you or them into the next steps, which is to lay out some specific actions that can be taken to reach the desired outcome.

If your concern were that you don’t have enough money for postcards, you could layout a series of steps to further help change that outlook:

Determine how much postcards cost
Determine how much I can spend on them now
Are there shortcuts or alternative methods to keep the cost down?
Am I able to save up some money and, if so, how much per week or month?
What is my time frame for doing all of this?

In working with your patients to floss more, create with them this same type of list:

How much time will flossing take you each night?
How much time do you have right now each night?
Would it be better to do it first or last as part of your nighttime routine?
Will a reminder note from your hygienist or maybe a recurring notice on your phone help?

Again, the whole idea is to replace the word “impossible” with “possible.” Action is still required, and is often the hardest part, but a good plan and commitment to that plan is necessary and will make the difference.

This two-question strategy can work in lots of other things, too. There is simply no end to instances and places where we encounter defeated thinking in ourselves and those around us.

The more you practice it the better you will get at guiding both your patients and yourself into a higher level of achievement (including, landing a great dental hygiene job).

Finding Quality Offices and Aligning Yourself with Them

Now the Secret Weapon

Getting a Great Picture for your Job Search

“Did I Get the Job?” … (crickets)

How to Expand Your Dental Hygiene LinkedIn Network

Increase Patient Compliance and… Find a Job

Creating a Transitional Resume for a Dental Hygienist

Contact GetHiredRDH Now

Positive Resume Action Words

Passive vs. Active Writing

Positive Personality Adjectives

Now the Secret Weapon

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