How Vision Source Finds Excellent Employees

This editorial first appeared in the Q3 Edition of VisionSource OD Magazine

Michael Zost, OD, of Northfield, Illinois, has used Monster and Craigslist to search for employees. But the responses he received were often all over the board and not what he was looking for. “I’ve been in practice for 30 years and opened this practice four years ago. Hiring employees had always been a pain,” he says. So when he heard about Vision Source® vendor Local Eye Site, he decided to see if the online job site could help him streamline the search process. “It focuses on people in optical and the eye care industry, so it’s more focused than the broad searches,” he says.

Dr. Zost first used the service in 2014 to find a new employee. “I found a candidate quickly and easily, and it worked out really well until that employee wanted to find a job closer to her home. But through Local Eye Site, we were able to find two other people,” he says. For that second search, he tapped into a Local Eye Site service called Connect2Hire. “Local Eye Site takes the ad and brings it not only to the eye care industry but also to other selected job search engines, which opens the candidate pool up even more,” he says. “Going through Craigslist is really a shot in the dark. It’s hard to know which search engine is going to work best for you, and as practitioners and business owners, we don’t really have the time to experiment to find out,” Dr. Zost says.

Local Eye Site “representatives understand how to make an ad stand out and make it effective so that it draws the attention of candidates who are well suited to it. It needs to be enticing, but it also needs to be specific enough with some of the job descriptions that not everyone who sees it will send in a resume.” Plus, he can change the language in the ad while it’s posted. “We have responses coming in the day after an ad goes up, so if we see that people are responding to some aspect—or ignoring some aspect of the posting—we can change it so that we fine tune the target even more.” Some of his candidates have come to him with optical experience, but not all of them have. “We’ve had a candidate with certified nursing assistant training apply for an optometric patient care associate, and that might work for us very well.

If these candidates are open to learning new things, I’m interested in seeing how they’d do.” With more and better-suited candidates coming to him for his most recent job posting, Dr. Zost also has the opportunity to think ahead regarding his staffing needs. “We have three full-time employees. We interviewed five people for a position, but during the process, I began to see the possibility for bringing on two people,” he says.

Too often in the past, hiring an employee has been a critical situation. One employee gives notice or suddenly it’s apparent that everyone is overloaded, and the goal is simply to get a new employee in fast. But when you’re getting more well-matched candidates to start with, it’s an opportunity to meet with these potential employees and see how they can help you achieve larger goals.

In other words, by having Local Eye Site take some of the minutiae out of the process of job postings, Dr. Zost says he can rededicate that time to planning for his future. “Having Local Eye Site as a resource helps me be more competitive and get better employees. I look forward to coming to work because I have good people working for me and I have a vehicle to hire good people,” he says. 

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THE VISION SOURCE® EDGE
Local Eye Site has created a concierge service for Vision Source® practices. Maureen Schmitz leads a department dedicated to supporting Vision Source® practices with recruitment efforts. Schmitz says that the department has three main objectives for Vision Source® ODs.

• Help them hire a higher caliber of employee for ultimate greater profitability.
• Lessen the time and effort associated with finding these employees.
• Reduce expenses associated with the recruitment and retention of staff.

Contact Schmitz at 919-322-5722 or via email at maureen@localeyesite.com