Hiring the right person for the job is a crucial upstream factor in having a high functioning team. But how do you know who the right person is? An interview can be deceptive or inconclusive. Also, most doctors do not hire often enough to become skilled at it. Getting lucky sometimes works, but we do not want that to be a primary business strategy!
Understanding basic personality styles as outlined originally in the MBTI (Myers/Briggs Type Indicator) test can be a big help in selecting the best applicant for any position you have available. Interestingly, the two individuals who developed the original instrument (a mother-daughter team) were not licensed professionals, but were simply interested in the emerging field of psychology. They studied the works of Carl Jung, and published the test in 1944.
The basic idea of the type indicator is that there are 4 main areas of human personality:
- Your basic attitude regarding other people (extraversion/introversion)
- Your method of gathering information (sensing/intuition)
- Your method of making decisions (thinking/feeling)
- Your method of taking action (judging/perceiving)
Since there are 2 possibilities with each area, this leaves 16 possible types. This is a complex set of ideas, and cannot be adequately summarized in a single blog. My favorite short resource is by Berens and Nardi: The 16 Personality Types.
MBTI in hiring
The first step in using this guide is to understand what your own personality style is. The simplest way, of course is to take the test. There are several online resources for this, including some similar ones that are free. This website will guide you to the testing pages.
Once you know your own style, it becomes easier to become aware of and to sideline your own biases. This is crucial, because the person you are hiring may have skills and characteristics you lack, but your company sorely needs.
The next step is to outline the best profile for the job. This is usually straightforward once you are used to thinking in this vein. Does the job involve frequent interaction with other people, or is it mostly solo? Does the information involved in the job have to be highly detailed and accurate, or are we better with broad-brush strokes? Are decisions to be made using a rigid set of criteria equally applied to everyone, or is it better to make decisions based on the situation at hand? Do we want to be organized and planned out far in advance, or do we want to remain open to last minute changes and alterations?
Typical Types
In hiring for a doctor’s office, the administrative labor is going to be divided roughly between two main areas: front desk and back desk. Some offices are small or young enough so that there is only one person doing both functions. This is a tougher hire,
The front desk is about people, schedules and positive, welcoming interactions. There are some financial and administrative details, but most of the people being interacted with are already customers/clients/patients or other employees.
The back desk is about finances, information exchange and operations of the clinic. This involves much less direct people contact, and many of the people contacted are not affiliated directly with the clinic, such as insurance adjusters, attorney’s office staffers, vendors, suppliers, etc.
The type that fits best with the pure front desk role is an ESTJ. This stands for Extraverted, sensing, thinking, and judging. The summary is that she enjoys being around and is generally energized by other people, she is detail oriented in her information gathering, she makes decisions through rules and procedures and likes to plan and have things buttoned down. She does not do well with boredom, isolation, downtime, abstract thinking, considering outside influences in decision making or leaving things open.
The type that does best with a pure back desk job is the INTJ. She enjoys working on projects more than on people, looks at the big picture when gathering information, makes decisions through rules and procedures, and likes planning and having things complete. She does not do well with an environment without privacy, security and the ability to work steadily on a project, and she does not like details in the absence of context.
Remember that these characteristics are on a continuum, and not a dichotomy. Sometimes you will see someone all the way on the extreme of a characteristic, but that is the exception, not the rule. Also a person can be trained to bring out the less dominant characteristic to adapt to circumstances; we’re not usually locked into just one way of behaving. Understanding the basic needs of the job and the characteristics of the person can go a long way towards reducing your turnover and increasing your productivity and workplace satisfaction.