TempStars dental temping and hiring – Do you know what services TempStars offers and how the company operates? Are you a new member to TempStars or perhaps you have questions about new features?

On October 28 2021, our very own James Younger, DDS Founder/CEO, TempStars hosted an Instagram Live Stream, ‘Ask James Anything’. James answered pre-submitted questions and real-time questions submitted in the chat/comments area of the Live Stream.

We received plenty of questions that shared similar themes; TempStars Community and Membership Management, COVID, PPE, Vaccinations, Hourly Rates, TempStars Fees, Shift Cancellations, Shift Start Times, General Employment Market, and TempStars Job Board.

TempStars Community and Membership Management

As we continue to grow and start to create an impact and make a positive influence on the dental community and the dental job market, it’s really important to us to stand behind our commitment to dental professionals – dentists, dental office managers, hygienists, dental assistants, and everybody involved in the community. The whole team at TempStars is always working hard to brainstorm strategies for improving our service. We always invite member feedback and suggestions; we participate in social listening, we research current pain points that dental professionals experience, and we conduct member outreach calls. Within the last year we rolled out a Community Management Program that includes membership statuses for dental offices, dental hygienists, and dental assistants. This program is unique to TempStars and we often get questions about how membership statuses are achieved. We created a flowchart that clearly explains how the membership statuses are achieved and what members can do to strive for success. We value both sides of the temping experience (dental offices and dental hygienists and dental assistants) which is why we carefully monitor feedback, reliability, and professionalism. Both sides are important and finding a balance between the two sides creates positive and happy temping matches.

COVID, PPE, and Vaccinations

Addressing COVID, PPE and vaccinations has certainly been a rodeo. We understand the frustrations and the anxious feelings that people are facing with everything happening related to the pandemic. It truly is not an easy landscape to navigate, but we thank you for your patience and we are doing our best to address the concerns with guidance from our governing health and safety bodies. We have a really big release coming up that will have a feature built in to have dental offices state whether or not they require proof of full vaccination for a temping shift and the same for our Job Board if they’re posting a job for hiring. One of our philosophies at the forefront of our services is not to coerce people into a certain behaviour, but to make things as transparent as possible so that everyone using TempStars can make informed decisions.

Hourly Rates

TempStars was built with a free market concept, but as of July last year when offices started to open back up, we witnessed a huge shortage of dental hygienists and dental assistants. The shortage then led us to see some exorbitant rates – objectively called ‘gouging’. Because Tempstars was built with a free market concept, dental hygienists and dental assistants were able to ask for their preferred rate, and if someone’s willing to pay it, that’s fantastic – it’s really up to the office to accept or decline. However, we noticed the exorbitant rates were damaging the community and because we value the overall dental community and dental professionals, we acted quick by adding guardrails. Now, the offices have the ability to propose an hourly rate. Some of the guardrails we’ve added are expanding a wider range of hourly rates to pro and elite members, and new grads have a slightly reduced range in the hourly rates. We wrote a detailed blog post about TempStars Hourly Rates – we invite you to check it out if you would like to know more about how TempStars operates and what the team is doing to mitigate the hourly rates.

TempStars Fees

James Younger, CEO/Founder of TempStars has a strong fundamental belief that TempStars should not be collecting money until after we’ve provided value. We don’t charge anything to join, we don’t charge anything to post a shift, and we don’t charge anybody to hire. It really is just our temping fee and the small fee to view a resume on our Job Board. But even before you decide to view a person’s resume, we have a little recommendation engine that provides a recommendation score about how likely you (a dental office) would be happy with that candidate if you were to hire them.

Shift Cancellations

We received a question about what we do about dental hygienists or dental assistants that cancel the day of the shift. This is a rare occurrence and something we take very seriously. As part of our Community Management Program, we know that if somebody does not show up, or on short notice cancels for a shift, we do take into consideration a person’s track record. For example, if someone completed 100 shifts, 80% were 5-star ratings, never canceled a shift before, but they were in a car accident, or something happened, well, we’re not necessarily going to remove the person from our system, but if it’s someone who has canceled or no-showed before we will take the necessary steps to address the situation and remove the member from our system. So if you’re new to TempStars, we cannot stress enough how critical it is to commit and succeed at those first shifts to establish a track record of getting positive feedback and no canceling shifts. For those who are no-show for shifts, they’re removed unless there’s something that happened and they’re able to explain and provide a doctor’s note. We really do take it seriously and if you’re curious to know more about Membership Statuses click here.

Shift Start Times

Dental offices should post the time that they want the person to arrive and there’s a pop up that shows on screen for dental hygienists and dental assistants to be aware of that time. When a dental office is posting arrival time, it specifically says “Put the time that you want the person to arrive ready to work at your office, not the time of your first patient.” So, if you are an office putting the time of the first patient as the arrival time, you can’t expect that person there before that. Naturally, if an office was to do that, the dental hygienist or dental assistant could end up feeling behind at the beginning of the day because they show up at the time they’re supposed to arrive.

Employment Market

With our expansion in the USA, we’ve been getting questions about independent contractors versus employees. We understand that there are different employment and tax laws for each state. We are carefully conducting research and consulting legal advice about this topic. We will continue to brainstorm features that address this topic as we continue modifying our web and mobile applications to serve the USA.

TempStars Job Board

We received a question about our Job Board and why you can’t see the rate of pay on some postings, but you can for other postings. We left it up to the office to decide whether or not they want to include the rate of pay – similar to a classified ad. As we built out the Job Board, we interviewed dentists who were hiring and they mentioned their frustrations with the current solutions and expressed that they prefer to post anonymously for a few reasons. Some reasons include – they don’t want applicants to call the office right away and inquire more info with the receptionist who is busy with patients and patient calls, and they may be looking to hire someone for a role they already have somebody in and don’t want that person to know they’re hiring.

To watch the full recording of the IG Live Stream click the link here or access the video below.