Office and practice managers
Five different jobs are advertised under this one title
Which one you are hiring for depends almost entirely on the size of the practice, and getting that wrong is the reason so many office manager hires quietly fail in the first year. Move the slider to your practice.
Two dentists, five chairs
What the job actually is
Office manager, still hands-on
The first size where the manager is not the only administrator. They still cover the desk when somebody is off, which is usually how an owner discovers how much they were carrying.
On their plate
- Scheduling and recall oversight
- Claims and collections
- Suppliers and ordering
- Staff rotas
- Onboarding
- Front desk cover
No longer theirs: Reception and phones. Somebody else is doing it, and hiring somebody who still wants to do it is how the role goes wrong.
The wrong office manager is expensive in a way nobody puts on a spreadsheet
A mismatched hygienist costs you a day. A mismatched office manager costs you the year it takes to find out. They are not bad at the job. They are usually good at a different size of the job, and by the time that is obvious your recall list has drifted, two people you liked have left, and nobody can say exactly when it started.
Practices do not lose their office manager suddenly. They lose them in the eleven months before anyone says it out loud.
It also runs the other way. Promoting a brilliant front desk lead into a role that is now mostly managing people is the single most common way a practice loses two good employees at once: the person who was promoted, and the person who replaced them at the desk.
None of this is an argument for using a recruiter. It is an argument for being specific before anybody starts looking, which is where a search should begin and usually does not.
Permanent placement
How the search runs
Five stages, and the first one is the one most searches skip.
- 01
We work out which job it is
Before anything else. The scale above is not a diagram, it is the first conversation. An owner who says they want somebody to take work off their plate and an owner who wants somebody to run the place are describing two different hires.
- 02
We write down what only they know
Every practice has a set of things that live in one person's head: which supplier is a problem, which hygienist will not work Fridays, how the recall list is really maintained. If your current manager is leaving, this is the last chance to capture it.
- 03
We approach people who are not looking
Good office managers are already employed and reasonably happy, which keeps them off job boards entirely. Reaching them takes outbound work.
- 04
You meet a short list
A short list of people worth your time, already screened against what this role actually involves. You interview, you decide, and nothing moves without you.
- 05
We stay in it until the start date
The gap between a verbal yes and a signed start date is where office manager hires die, usually to a counter-offer. Somebody should be managing that fortnight, and it should not be you.
While you decide
Interim cover, so the search is not made under pressure
The worst time to choose a permanent office manager is the week after the last one left. Interim cover buys back the months you need, and it stops the practice running on somebody else’s evenings in the meantime.
On an interim placement the manager is our employee. Payroll, source deductions, remittances and employer obligations sit with us, so covering three months does not create an employment relationship for your practice.
Who employs the professionalWhen offices ask for it
- Maternity, parental, and medical leave
- A resignation with a month you cannot cover
- The gap between an outgoing manager and a permanent hire
- An owner stepping back from the day to day
Interim managers are placed on the same basis as any temporary professional. Where a placement later becomes permanent, the placement fee applies at that point and not before.
What a placement costs
A permanent placement carries a fee that varies by market, because pay and demand differ from one region to the next. It is quoted before anything is agreed, and it is priced to stay competitive with what a recruiter would charge for the same hire.
You will not find an hourly figure on this page. We publish set rates by city for hygienists, assistants, chairside and reception, and an office cannot pay under them. Office managers are not on that card, because the job at three chairs and the job across three locations are not the same job and should not carry the same number. We quote each one individually.
Yours as the employer
When you hire an office manager permanently, you are the employer. Reference checks, background screening to whatever standard you set, employment contracts and onboarding are your responsibility and your advisors’, not something we can carry on your behalf. We introduce the candidate and pass on what we hold.
We also do not assess whether somebody can manage. Nobody can do that from outside a practice, and an agency that says it can is selling you a feeling rather than a check. What we can do is find people whose track record is at the size you actually are, and put them in front of you quickly.
We would rather say this plainly than let you assume a check happened that did not.
Start with which job it is
Tell us your size, your team, and what you want off your plate. We will tell you what kind of manager that is and whether we can find one.