Question

I am underemployed at two days a week as a dental hygienist. I used to work part-time in two practices at one time (40-55 hours a week) with partial benefits and health insurance. Now I have no benefits or insurance. I make just a little too much to get state programs. I have been in the dental field for about 20 years. I have my local newspaper’s app on my cell and I check the job listings every day. What can I do to improve my situation for employment and health insurance?

Nick’s Reply

underemployedThe number of people that are underemployed is often overlooked, so I sympathize. I’m not a benefits or insurance expert by a long shot, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for specific advice about your options. I suggest starting with the Health Insurance Marketplace.

You can keep scrolling the apps on your cell to find a job, but all you’re doing is competing with more people than any dental office can hire. This is a common mistake. We all succumb to what seems the easiest way to find a job, which is to wait for one to come along in the listings. But as you’ve found, that doesn’t work. Please stop for a minute and think.

If you were a dentist, who would you hire? Someone you don’t know who responded to a job listing on an app, or someone who was recommended to you by another dentist or healthcare provider?

Where jobs come from

Hint: Depending on what survey you look at, 40%-70% of jobs are found and filled through personal contacts. So you know what you must do.

Prepare a list of every dental office in the towns and cities near yours. Then prepare a list of all medical personnel you know, no matter what area of healthcare they’re in or whether they work in a hospital or private practice. Now comes the real work. Go through your list of doctor’s offices and research them online. Most will have a website.

Who knows where the jobs are?

Which practices seem big enough that they probably have some turnover? Which seem very busy? Which might need help? (Don’t worry about whether they have job openings.)

Now turn to your contacts in healthcare. You’re not going to ask them for job leads. Ask each of them whether they know an employee or a patient at any of the dental practices on your other list. Since you’ve been in the business so long, you probably also know some of the medical sales reps who come calling at the doctor’s office. Contact them, too — they know loads of doctors. (Get the idea? You could even contact patients or anyone that would know a practice.)

Get personal to get ahead of your competition

In each case, don’t ask for a job lead. Ask about the particular office:

  • How long has it been in business?
  • Is it respected?
  • What kind of place is it to work in?
  • What kind of help does it need?

Any information you obtain this way, by getting personal, is probably more information than your competitors have. This gives you an edge and puts you ahead. (Please see Job Hunting With The Headhunter: Go around the system!)

The more you talk, the more you’ll learn. The magic question to close with is this: Would you recommend this office as a place to work? Then: Who would you recommend I talk to, to learn more about working there?

This is how headhunters operate. We talk a lot to learn a lot. We need only one solid tidbit of information, and one solid personal referral, to do business. It’s what you need to get an interview in a good office.

Insurance and benefits

I’m sure you know this already: A full-time job is more likely to get you insurance and benefits than multiple part-time gigs. Loads of employers prefer part-time workers because it lowers their total costs. Often, job postings aren’t clear about whether the job is part-time (perhaps through a contracting firm) or full-time and direct, with insurance and benefits. When you approach via personal contacts you’re more likely to learn the truth sooner — all you have to do is ask.

The solution to being underemployed is to make personal contacts. So start talking to people about the dental offices in your area, and get introduced. It’s how medical offices hire — through trusted referrals.

Going from underemployed to employed with insurance with benefits isn’t very different from starting out unemployed. Am I missing something? Have you ever gotten stuck being underemployed? How’d you get back into the mainstream? How would you advise this reader?

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9 Comments
  1. Great advice. If she follows your advice, she’ll find something. As for the health insurance challenge, that’s a topic for another day, but the Obamacare exchange is a place to start, given our crappy system.

  2. My wife knows several people who are dental assistance , and one granddaughter period they all report that jobs are not that good period when they have a company party, the dentist wants the dental assistants to bring the refreshments period and pay for them period they seem to be that cheap. The cheapest people on earth even more than accountants. Even full time is no better.

  3. If I may, I’d like to add this.

    I was taught a networking method in 1978, and in that method I learned about “the kiss of death.” That is approaching people like this, which stops our efforts dead in their tracks: 1) “I’m looking for a job as a dental hygienist. Are you hiring, or do you know anyone who is?” 2) “I’m looking for a job as a dental hygienist and see that your practice is hiring. Can you refer or recommend me?”

    The key to success, as I found it several times, is to meet / talk with people as Nick suggests here, in a way that allows them to know us a little, like us a little, and trust us at least a little, and lets them, on their own, without being asked, decide to help, refer, or recommend us.

    • @Chris: Any smart job seeker can take that advice to the bank! Yet (1) and (2) seem to be the ingrained approach. I refer to it as putting your monkey on someone’s back. If they agree to recommend you or to “take my resume in,” the monkey will be asking day in and day out, “Is anything happening yet?” Nobody wants that monkey or to be responsible for you.

      On the other hand, asking good questions, talking shop, asking for advice — most people enjoy doing all 3. And it’s more fun than begging. :-)

  4. Good stuff about making personal contacts, etc.

    Specific to your situation… last I knew, dentists were DESPERATE for hygienists, so I’m interested that you’re experiencing something else. Is moving to another location an interesting option for you?

  5. If you are good at what you do and a dental office is not going to provide 40 hours per week including full benefits and health insurance, I would make that determination as soon as possbile and move on to another employer. Look for established practices where patients are treated well. You could look at the patient reviews and how the staff treat them. If patients are treated well and the staff are respectful, then dentists probably treat their staff well.

    • Be upfront by asking if thejob is and eill remain fullyime; also about benefits retirement and all the rest. Tell the dentist why you are asking upfront,that you are not playing games like some dentists do, and that you are in it for the long haul.

  6. In my neck of the woods, dental hygienists are in high demand and get signing bonuses! Western suburbs of Chicago!

  7. I’m going to recommend something even more audacious. The problem with the current dental hygienist employment model is that each individual dental office rarely needs a full-time dental hygienist, so for the hygienist they need to cobble together multiple part-time gigs to make a living. All the hygienists are in the same position and end up competing with each other. What if you got a few hygienists to form a partnership where each one is a full-time employee of the partnership which can then purchase proper small business medical insurance for the employee/partners? Then the partnership goes to the dentists and sells them the idea that they will contract with them to provide hygienists as contractual workers which will simplify their accounting and remove the overhead of part-time employees. Everyone wins in the end. Note there are other very high-skilled jobs, like veterinarians, who are often put in the same position, because the employment rules make it more expensive to hire full-time employees than part-time ones. This problem is not unique to hygienists.

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