Attracting Top Talent for Your Rehab Therapy Practice

Physical therapists are in high demand, and the profession is growing rapidly. Additionally, interest is growing for speedy, multitasking jack-of-all-trades front office, compliance, and billing experts to round out the rehab clinic. While the talent pool is deepening, competition remains steep, and you absolutely want the crème de la crème (no matter the position) for your practice. So how do you attract and hire top talent?

Get Your Practice in Tip Top Shape

You can start by making your practice worthy of awards, like best places to work and best in healthcare. Do good work, provide amazing service, and maintain a happy, driven, passionate staff. In other words, work with what you got, first. And while you’re at it, make sure your compensation and benefits package is up to snuff. An innovative office (with an inviting lounge), team-building events, solid vacation time, autonomy, flexible scheduling, relocation funding, collaborative environment, and a commitment bonus are all alluring, too.

Tap into the Talent Sources

Got those ducks in a row? Now let’s go find those top candidates. An enthusiastic and well-written (emphasis on well-written) job description that’s representative of your practice’s culture is a good foundation. Essentially, be clear in what you want professionally and culturally from the beginning and you’ll automatically start filtering candidates simply through your posting.

Networking builds upon that job listing. Get thoroughly involved in the rehab community and partner with local universities to acquire blossoming talent right off the bat. While you’re networking, make sure your practice has a lot of exposure. Advertise, use social media, attend speaking engagements—essentially, flex your marketing muscle. In addition to catching the eye of prospective patients, you’ll let top talent know you not only exist, but that you’rethe “it” PT organization.

Interview with Purpose

Once you line up some interviews, be sure to ask the right questions—ones designed to uncover professional ability, natural intelligence and problem solving skills, and cultural fit. Take your time with the process. Conduct multiple interviews in different settings with an array of team members. Hire slow to ensure the best fit for both you and the candidate. Of course, you can’t hire for a cultural fit if your practice doesn’t have a clearly defined culture and mission. So know yours.

Make Employment Meaningful

High five! You’ve hired some awesome talent. Time to keep ‘em driven, challenged, and most importantly, happy. How do you accomplish this? Listen and communicate, well and often. Learn about all your team members (from front office to your most tenured therapist)—what do they want to do? How do they want to grow? And what do they need from you to do their job better, meet their goals smarter, and navigate around obstacles? Lastly, always advocate for your team. Praise is great, but constructive feedback is better. Find their strengths and help them maximize them. Basically, save the sis boom bah for football games and give your team meaningful and productive dialogue.    

Your top talent mission is complete—you have a great organization with plenty of rock stars and a lot of heart. Most importantly, though, you’re bolstering the rehab therapy profession because it’s all cyclical: you start a solid practice that earns accolades; you discover top talent and hire them; and then that talent takes your organization into the stratosphere, thus helping you earn even greater accolades and achieve (hopefully, monumental) success. And even when it’s time for your top talent to search for a new gig (because eventually it may happen), it’s okay because the training and guidance you’ve provided will help them make another therapy practice successful, too. Thus, further educating the public that therapists are the musculoskeletal experts and providing more patients more opportunities to improve their quality of life.

So what are you waiting for? Go find that crème de la crème! Got additional tips? Share your advice in the comments below.