How Lakeside Family Dentistry hired five people in a year

Challenge

Growth is a good problem, but it is still a problem. Lakeside Family Dentistry was adding patients faster than it was adding people, and each new hire meant starting the whole process over: writing the ad, fielding the replies, screening, scheduling interviews around a full clinical day, and hoping the person who accepted was the person who showed up.

The practice had tried recruiters and found the same friction every time. Each engagement began with a briefing that covered the same ground as the last one: what the office is like, how the team works, what kind of person lasts here and what kind does not. That knowledge never accumulated anywhere. It was rebuilt from scratch by a different person on every search.

There was also a quieter cost. Interviewing tells you how somebody interviews. It does not tell you whether they are calm when the schedule slips, whether they chart the way your team charts, or whether the room feels right with them in it. Lakeside had made hires that looked excellent on paper and did not survive the first month, and every one of those was a search paid for twice.

Solution

Lakeside stopped treating each hire as a separate project. Roles get posted through WORKFORCE, and because the same platform handles the practice's temp coverage, the context carries over. Who has worked the building, which of them the team asked for again, what the office actually needs on a Tuesday: none of that has to be re-explained.

The bigger shift was using temp shifts as the front of the hiring funnel. When Lakeside needed a permanent hygienist, it did not always start with a job posting. Often it started with the people already covering shifts there, one of whom had spent four separate days in the practice and was known to everybody in it.

That changes what an interview is for. Instead of trying to predict fit from a conversation, the team already had the evidence. They had watched the person work, seen how they handled a running-late morning, and heard what the hygienists thought of them. The interview became a conversation about terms rather than a guess about character.

It works in the other direction too, and that matters more than practices tend to expect. A hygienist who has worked four days in your building knows what they are accepting. They have met the team, seen the operatories and worked your actual schedule. Offers made on that basis get accepted more often and, crucially, they stick.

Results

Lakeside hired five permanent hygienists and assistants over the course of a year. No search was started from a blank page, and no new recruiter had to be brought up to speed on what the practice is like.

Most of those hires had worked the practice as temps first. The ones that had were the fastest to close and the least eventful to onboard, because there was nothing to learn about the building on day one. They already knew where things were kept.

The practice also stopped losing candidates to slow decisions. Strong hygienists are usually gone within days, and the reason offices lose them is rarely money. It is that the process takes three weeks and somebody else moved in four days. Lakeside can move quickly because the evidence is gathered before the vacancy exists, not after.

One thing worth being clear about

On a permanent placement the practice is the employer from day one. Lakeside runs its own payroll, carries its own coverage and does its own credential checks on the people it hires, exactly as it would with any direct hire. The credential verification we carry applies to temp and locum placements, where the professional is our employee for the booking.

It is worth saying plainly because the temp-to-perm route can blur it. Somebody can work your building for months as our employee and then become yours on the Monday they sign. The verification that covered the temp shifts does not follow them across that line, and a practice that assumes it does is carrying a risk it does not know about.

What is next

Lakeside now keeps a standing list of temps it would happily hire, rather than waiting for a vacancy to start looking. It costs nothing extra, because the shifts needed covering regardless. The practice is clear-eyed about what the list is worth: most of the people on it have no interest in a permanent job, so a search still runs whenever a position opens.