You're Not Just Filling a Seat. So Stop Interviewing Like You Are.
Hiring is one of the highest-stakes decisions you make as a practice owner. And yet most interviews are conducted without a clear framework, without a deliberate question strategy, and without a consistent method for extracting the information that actually tells you whether this person belongs in your practice.
The result is a seat that gets filled. Not necessarily a team that gets stronger.
I want to walk you through what a great interview looks like, what separates the interviews that produce great hires from the ones that produce expensive regrets, and what specifically to watch for on both sides of the conversation.
The Purpose of the Interview Is Not Comfort. It Is Information.
Every interview should be organic. That is not a contradiction of structure. It means the conversation should breathe and follow the candidate rather than rigidly adhere to a script. If you know within the first ten minutes that this person is not the right fit, end it. Professionally, respectfully, and without dragging it out for another forty minutes out of politeness. Your time and their time are both worth protecting.
Conversely, if someone is proving to be a strong candidate, keep going. Keep scratching the surface. The goal is to extract as much meaningful information as possible while the opportunity is in front of you. A great interview is not a fixed-length appointment. It is a diagnostic conversation that goes as deep as the candidate allows.
And the quality of that conversation is almost entirely determined by the quality of your questions.
Close-Ended Questions Are Costing You Great Hires
Here is the single most common interview mistake I see. Practice owners and managers ask close-ended questions and then wonder why they do not learn anything meaningful about the candidate.
If you ask someone whether they know how to use a specific software package they will tell you yes or no. That tells you nothing about their actual proficiency, their comfort level, how recently they have used it, or whether their version of knowing it matches what your practice actually requires.
If you ask whether they have experience with a specific implant system or a specific clinical protocol you will get the same binary response. Yes or no. And you will have learned almost nothing.
Open-ended questions change the entire dynamic. Instead of asking whether someone can do something, ask them to show you how they think about it. Ask them to walk you through a specific situation where they applied that skill. Ask them what they would do when the scenario gets complicated. The answer to a great open-ended question reveals knowledge, competence, and confidence simultaneously. A yes or no answer reveals none of those things.
What You Are Actually Trying to Find Out
Every interview you conduct should be working toward four specific determinations.
Is this the best candidate you have in front of you? Do you have any genuinely good candidates in front of you? Should you hire this person? And do they have a high probability of success in this specific role inside this specific practice?
Those are the questions behind all the other questions. Everything you ask in the interview should be generating data that helps you answer one of those four.
What a Strong Interview Actually Looks Like
Let me give you a concrete picture of what good interviewing produces when it is done well. I recently reviewed the summary of an interview conducted for a key team member position with one of my clients. Here is what went right and what it produced.
The interviewer directly tested whether the candidate actually wanted the scope and scale of the role rather than assuming. That matters enormously. A candidate who accepts a position and then experiences a disconnect between what they expected and what the role actually requires becomes a turnover problem within months. Surfacing that misalignment in the interview prevents a post-hire surprise that costs everyone.
Concrete logistics were nailed down before an offer was extended. Where the person would sit. Who they would work alongside. What the day-to-day environment actually looked like. Small details to some. Critical self-selection data for the candidate and for the practice.
The interviewer was transparent about the practice's history and the doctor's expectations. That transparency allowed the candidate to evaluate the opportunity honestly rather than making a decision based on an idealized version of the role.
Real specific compensation numbers and the candidate's reasoning behind them were discussed directly. Not vague hints. Not ranges without context. Actual numbers with actual rationale. Compensation misalignment after an offer is extended is one of the most avoidable sources of friction in the hiring process.
A small operational detail the candidate mentioned, something as seemingly insignificant as a candy bowl, was used to reveal a real management pattern rather than dismissed as small talk. That is the hallmark of a strong interviewer. Everything the candidate offers is data. The interviewer's job is to recognize it and follow the thread.
The candidate voluntarily disclosed an integrity concern about her current employer withholding information from owners. She was not asked about it directly. She offered it. And it mapped directly onto the values the practice needed to see in someone in that role. That kind of unsolicited disclosure is one of the most valuable things an interview can produce and it almost always surfaces when the conversation is genuinely organic rather than rigidly scripted.
What the Same Interview Got Wrong
I am sharing this because the gaps are just as instructive as the strengths.
Too much time was spent on rapport building and career narrative that had almost certainly been covered in earlier interview rounds. By the time you reach a final interview the relationship has been established. That time should be spent on unresolved questions not on re-covering ground that previous conversations already addressed.
A stated weakness was allowed to pass without a follow-up example. The candidate acknowledged leniency around discipline. The interviewer agreed with the self-assessment rather than testing it. Agreeing with a candidate's self-evaluation is not the same as verifying it. A single follow-up asking for a specific situation where that tendency showed up and what the outcome was would have produced far more useful information.
There were no calibration questions on case acceptance, referral relationship management, or KPI ownership. Even one quick question on each of those areas would have clarified whether those were genuine skill gaps or simply untested skills waiting to be developed.
And there was no explicit closing checkpoint. No summary of what was learned, what remained open, and what the next step looked like. That is worth building into every final interview regardless of how well the conversation went.
Build the System Around the Interview
One practical point worth making for any practice that runs multi-round interviews. Build a shared tracking document that each interviewer contributes to after their session. What was covered. What was learned. What remains open. Without that document you run a real risk of two things happening simultaneously. Redundant coverage where multiple interviewers ask the same questions and none of the real gaps get addressed. Or blind spots where everyone assumes a previous round covered something that nobody actually asked.
A great candidate deserves a process that gives them a fair and complete evaluation. And you deserve an interview process that actually gives you the information you need to make the right decision.
The Standard You Should Hold Yourself To
You are not interviewing to fill a seat. You are interviewing to find the person who is going to move the needle for your team, your operation, and your future. That standard changes everything about how you prepare for an interview, how you conduct it, and how you evaluate what you learned afterward.
Ask great questions. Let the conversation breathe. Follow the threads that reveal real character, real competence, and real fit. And end it early when you know it is not right rather than hoping the next thirty minutes will change your mind.
The hire you make or do not make from this process will be sitting in your practice every day. Make the decision like it matters that much.
Because it does.
Let's talk.
