Dentists and Dental Staff- Are You Ready for your Job Interview?

Are You Ready for the Interview?

You want to work for the practice, they've seen your credentials and they've asked you in for an interview. You want the job. Here are some suggestions that will help you make sure your interview goes as well as possible.

Preparing for the interview

Thorough preparation is critical. It is great for your confidence in the interview room and it leaves a very positive impression with the interviewers.

1. Get the logistics right. Time, location, interviewer's name and position title.
2. Do your research. Find out as much as possible about the practice: size, scope, location of the office and any satellite locations, etc. The practice website should be a very good source. If the website includes a biographical sketch of the owner, be sure to research the organizations and institutes of which the owner is a member.
3. Do some more research. Make sure you have key data in your head about your existing and most recent employers.
4. Do even more research. Ask former co-workers to tell you about your professional traits. What did they most admire? Try to find some faults as well. This leaves you more prepared for questions such as "what are your greatest faults" or "if I were working with you ...".
5. Prepare questions. The employer will be trying to work out whether you fit the available role. You should also take the opportunity to ensure that the practice is right for you.
6. Practice (see below). Take time to run through some of your answers. Don't over-rehearse, but make sure that you are coming across confidently.
7. Present yourself well. Find out what the office culture is regarding business dress. If in doubt, go more formal, not less formal. Make sure you are well groomed on the day.

What you should practice

When practicing for an interview, you should focus particularly on the way you answer questions.

1. Be descriptive. Don't just answer "yes" or "no" to questions. But also avoid "over-answering." Make your answers colorful but not lengthy.
2. Sell yourself to the interviewer, but without exaggeration or telling lies. You are there to market yourself, "blow your own trumpet" and explain why you'd be right for the role. But don't come across as arrogant.
3. Avoid making negative remarks about your current employer, or past employers or colleagues. This will only reflect on you in the interview.
4. Be determined. Make it clear that you want to get the job, even if you are given information in the interview that sheds a new light on the role. Be positive, and then evaluate the opportunity again when you are away from the interview. Don't burn your bridges.
5. Have positive body language, and maintain a good posture.

Remember: expect unexpected questions. It's fine to pause for thought. It's also acceptable to admit you don't know the answer.

Contributed by Morgan Pace, Senior Account Executive/Dental Recruiter at ETS Dental. To find out more, call Morgan  at (540) 491-9102 or visit us online at www.etsdental.com. 

From Oberman Law: Should you choose a friend to be your business partner?

Thanks to Stuart Oberman at the Law Offices of Stuart Oberman, we share with you this thread from their website about whether or not friends are good choices for partnership.

Find out more at http://www.gadentalattorney.com/ or at their blog- http://obermanlawfirm.wordpress.com.


Planning to start a business partnership with a friend? Prudence demands looking at the pitfalls – as well as the potential strengths – of such relationships. Here are a few questions to consider.

• What will my friend contribute to the business? Does he or she have strengths that will clearly enhance the business – abilities, knowledge, or resources that you don’t possess or aren’t willing to acquire by other means? Say, for example, you are good with customer relations, but not too good with numbers. If your friend loves details and is clever with records, the partnership may make sense. If, on the other hand, your friend really can not offer something that would round out the business or make it more profitable, you might want to consider partnering with someone else.
• Are you willing to lose the friendship? This is a tough question, but one that’s critical to consider. After all, you and your friend will be working together, day in and day out, to make the business succeed. Such relationships can bring out the best – and worst – in people. If maintaining your friendship is one of your highest priorities, partnering with someone else may be a better choice.
• What’s expected from each partner? Developing a profitable business is hard and often unrewarding work. You and any potential business partner should honestly discuss expected work hours, contributions, and responsibilities. Resentment can creep into any business relationship when partners feel that workloads and rewards aren’t fairly distributed.
• Can you communicate effectively? Like a good marriage, a long-term business partnership takes honest communication to succeed. Ask yourself, for example, whether you can handle constructive criticism from your friend/business partner. Even the closest business partners don’t always see eye to eye, so it’s important to take an honest look at how you both handle disagreements. Will you work through difficulties for the firm’s sake, or bury your head in the sand and hope for the best? Answering this question is crucial to the success of your partnership.

This first appeared in Oberman Law.

A Decline in Productivity Could Lead to Growing Employment and a Self-Sustaining Recovery

In recent months, initial unemployment claims have edged down and the four-week moving average has fallen from over 400,000 claims a year ago to less than 370,000 a week. In September, the reported unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent crossing the critical psychological barrier of 8 percent for the first time since early 2009. U.S. consumer sentiment has actually reached a five year high in October according to the University of Michigan index.

“There is good reason to look at the economic data and say that the workforce situation continues to improve,” says Rob Romaine, president of MRINetwork. “People continue to see friends and neighbors going to work and nothing will rebuild sentiment faster than that. Consumer debt, which is increasing after years of consecutive quarterly declines shows that people have more confidence in their jobs and in their economic future."

Adding weight to the deluge of economic figures, GDP grew at an annualized rate of 2 percent from 1.3 percent in the second quarter of the year. The figure was more positive than many economists projected, yet it still is unlikely enough to pull growth in 2012 as a whole over 2 percent. Such growth, though, is not typically enough to drive substantial improvements in employment markets, and certainly not enough to push unemployment down half a percent in two months. Yet, that isn’t necessarily cause to think that either the employment or GDP figures are incorrect.

One potential cause is that productivity, which has increased through both the recession and the recovery, has reached a peak and employers are finding they can’t keep running with the same level of staff. The current level of economic growth has become less of a temporary condition and more of the new normal. Managers can no longer count on staff to continue working under emergency conditions, especially as corporate America continues to see record profitability. Since the economy’s peak in October of 2007 corporate after tax profitability has grown at nearly three times the rate of GDP.

Since about 2008, the number of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs fell significantly as people didn’t want to, or couldn’t change jobs at the rate they once did. The U.S. quit rate fell as low as 1.2 percent in late 2009, but has since recovered to 1.6 percent. The rate among workers who feel overworked or under-compensated is understandably even higher.

“Even if a company isn’t cutting its staffing levels, it likely is losing employees to churn at a higher rate today than they were two years ago,” says Romaine. “While through the recession managers might have tried to cover those losses with existing staff, today companies have reached a point where most positions vacated need to be backfilled. If a salary lasted in the budget through the recession, it was a position worth keeping filled.”

If hiring is increasing, however, that could very well help add buying power to the economy just in time for the holiday season, giving a possible boost to fourth quarter GDP.

The United Kingdom recently experienced a similar situation where employment was growing while GDP was shrinking. The counter cyclical employment growth was puzzling to many economists giving it names like 'the employment paradox' and the 'economic puzzle.' Whatever the cause though, the increased employment likely helped to lift the UK economy out of recession in the third quarter.

So whether the dog wags the tail, or the tail wags the dog, 2013 seems to be building the potential for some upside surprise for both the economy and labor market.