The world's shortest working interview?

Dentists often arrange for "working interviews". If a job applicant "passes" and initial interview we offer them a working interview. They come for a day, get paid, and we get to see them in action before offering a position. I like this approach, since I really can't tell from a thirty minute interview how someone will fit into our staff. Spending the day working together tends to provide us with a more useful assessment . Usually after a day working with someone , I have a better sense on whether I want to offer someone a job. Actions really do speak louder than words and sometimes an initial impression can be incorrect. Over the years I have had working interviews in which based on my initial impression I wasn't impressed, but after working with a person, I found them to be much more competent and pleasant to work with than I had expected. The converse is also sometimes true. I have been impressed with an interviewee but not so much after working with them.

Today we had arranged for a working interview for a dental assistant. We met her this week and asked her to come back for her trial work day. I asked her to be at the office at 8:40 so she could be part of our morning huddle and be ready when we started seeing patients at 9 AM. 

She missed the morning huddle and showed up at 9:08. There was no phone call to let us know she was running late and when she came in she said we had told her to show up at 9 AM.  She seemed to be a nice young person and I wanted this to be a learning experience. I explained that I had asked her to take part in our huddle and that we wouldn't be needing her services after all , since she already had "flunked" her working interview. I added that possibly it might help her for any future interviews if she made an the effort to be early. As far as I was concerned she should have put her best foot forward on her first day and not make excuses for tardiness. Sometimes "tough love" is the best medicine.


from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-worlds-shortest-working-interview.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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