Struggle with recruiting physio’s?
Turning clients away?
How comfortable are you to do so?
Knowing that you have free time available which you’re spending elsewhere.
I didn’t think so….
You can’t be.
If you’re anything like me anyway.
The thought of turning a client away eats away at your insides.
You remember the days when you couldn’t find clients.
Where you sat in your treatment room alone.
Waiting for the phone to ring.
Wishing someone would walk through your front door.
An ankle sprain.
An acute lower back.
You’d take anything.
Just to be able to practise.
And now you sit there under a deluge.
A flood of patients.
And you simply can’t fill the work.
Recruiting physio’s
So… as any good owner would do… you open your diary up.
You have to lead by example.
And before you know it, you’re full again.
And you have no time to spend on this most important of tasks.
Recruiting.
What options do you have now?
Pay a recruiter?
Hire someone from overseas?
Or just hope for the best?
Put up an expensive ad on Seek and cross your fingers.
There is a concept in investing known as timing the market.
It’s the most implausible strategy.
Because nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.
And having gone for months without any activity in your market.
There is seldom any prospect that right now, will be the right time.
It is possible to buy low and sell high.
But it is very much luck.
And there are better strategies than relying on hope.
Timing the market
I would easily spend over $2000 for every new physio recruit (this is purely on lead acquisition mind you).
And on average I would be recruiting 3-5 people per year (not always for my clinic).
So the total budget was more like $10K+.
Remember, this is with an abundant mindset for recruiting.
Before I understood recruitment I would do exactly what you do.
Advertise when you needed someone.
Makes sense right?
Advertising is expensive, why would I waste money (scarcity).
This is the first mistake.
It’s already too late…
It’s estimated the cost of replacing staff balloons out to $50-100K very quickly.
Recently this was reaffirmed at the APA business conference as another presenter estimated this replacement cost at 90K.
So we already know now that it is a massive cost to run short of team members.
Not to mention the strain it places on your remaining team.
And the internal battle you are left with every night.
The awesome power of dollar cost averaging
In 2009 when I started investing, I made some of the best returns of my career.
I bought my first 100 shares in CBA at $26.
It was dumb luck.
I’d timed the market perfectly post financial crisis.
But because I didn’t know any better I also sold those shares 8 months later at $45.
If I had just kept buying more… well you know where this story goes.
Which brings me to dollar cost averaging. This is the recommended strategy for long term investing.
Take a small amount of money and consistently apply it over time.
And the returns compound…
You won’t always get a good buy
- you may pay overs sometimes and you may pay unders at others.
But at the end of the day, you purchase something consistently.
Which means 10 years later you’re sitting pretty (as long as you have a good system***)
Recruiting physio’s is no different in my opinion.
Seven days spent recruiting physio’s
Sometime you do get lucky – Craig David style.
In 2021 I was tasked with a big recruiting challenge.
I had to find a quality hire under with some serious urgency.
Luckily, I’d been quite active on LinkedIn earlier that year and so I had a bit of traction.
And I rolled out my usual strategy, guns blazing.
Snagged a quality lead.
Bearing in mind that this was for a senior leadership role, so it should have required more tact.
But time was of the essence.
I figured out in lockdowns we could literally rob banks so to speak.
And that’s what I did.
Seven days from first contact to having the offer signed.
One week is all it takes to find and sign someone who is ready to leave.
I’d say that’s the gold standard for me.
Any longer and you run the risk of losing good people.
Because no one likes uncertainty.
So you’re either in OR you’re out.
Three things high performers have in common
With that said, the number one quality I look for in new starters is hustle.
And this process tells me everything I need to know.
My other hack – and this is a big recruitment hack!
Is an unexpected phone call.
This catches a lot of people off guard
It’s a nonchalant conversation – “how’s the weather…”
But you can pick up on 3 key things and save yourself hours of interviewing.
- Phone manner – this tells you about a persons actual persona – literally how they answer, whether they have a VM setup, how quickly they return your call – if this is someone who’s going to be working for you does their natural style reflect well on your business?
- Adaptability – can they think on their feet? Are they open to unexpected challenges (eg. mention a local sports team you work with – what is their response?
- Organisation – organised people know their schedules and can find time. Even more organised people keep spare time available… they know how to make time for important things. If you want a team member who can squeeze in an extra client, they ought to be able to squeeze in a catch-up with you somewhere in the next few days (#hustle).
These are the 3 qualities of high performing staff.
When you think about it you will see why.
They are yes people.
They are happy to launch themselves out of their comfort zone and journey into the unknown.
It’s rare to come across people who tick these boxes – I wouldn’t necessarily rule out people who don’t – but I would 100% rule in people who do.
These are the people you need when times get tough.
They’re your superstar practitioners – often here for a good time, not a long time.
Your job is to hang on to them for as long as possible, before they spread their wings.
Very important – systemise your process for recruiting physio’s!
I’ve recently been reading thinking fast and thinking slow by Daniel Kahneman.
If there’s one thing we can’t do it’s intuitively decide on candidates.
This is where having a process is helpful.
We are so heavily biased, we simply can’t see the flaws in our thought processes.
The Halo effect has a huge impact – when we like someone – we often like everything about them.
But we will never know anything about them until we’ve seen them out in the middle.
The best process I’ve seen is where all the work is done and you just make the final call.
Your next hire
If you haven’t been recruiting physio’s for more than 6 months, you ought to start thinking about your next hire.
Worst case, you can put someone on your waitlist for the next role.
The strategy I think about nowadays doesn’t involve expensive seek ads.
It’s a completely different tactic and it doesn’t cost anything in terms of outlay.
But it does come with an opportunity cost.
If it’s costing you 100K to replace a staff member.
I think we can part with 10K easily to ensure this doesn’t get out of hand.
And 10K is equal to about 20 hours of work on your part (hint: your time is worth $500 per hour…).
Or in other words…
Four to five hours per month of consistent commitment to address the biggest bottle neck in your business.
Finding good staff.
If you aren’t willing to commit this time don’t be surprised when you find yourself without any free time next month.
What do we do with those 4-5 hours?
Well, you might have to look inside the box to find out 😉
PS. Avoid nightmare staff and build a portfolio for success – Part two is available here – it’s a cracker!
