You've got an opening. Your practice is growing. Revenue is climbing, patient volume is up, and you need someone: fast.
So you do what feels obvious: you look for the best. The most credentialed. The most experienced. The candidate who impresses on paper and commands top dollar.
And three months later, you're wondering why the culture feels off, why the rest of your team is frustrated, and why that "star hire" is costing you more than their salary.
Here's the contrarian truth most practice owners don't want to hear: hiring "the best" is often the wrong move. What you actually need is the right person for the specific seat: and those two things are rarely the same.
The Credential Trap
When MGMA surveyed healthcare leaders about hiring priorities, 69% said cultural fit mattered most: not credentials, not technical skills, not years of experience. Character, work ethic, adaptability, and motivation ranked higher than resume bullets.
Why? Because in healthcare settings, technical competence is table stakes. Your patients aren't just interacting with credentials: they're interacting with people. And when those people lack patience, collaboration skills, or basic emotional intelligence, clinical excellence doesn't matter.
The superstar medical assistant with a decade of experience won't move your practice forward if they undermine your front desk staff. The practice manager with an MBA won't solve your operational chaos if they can't listen, adapt, or work within your existing systems.
Healthcare staffing solutions that prioritize fit over flash consistently outperform those chasing the biggest names. Yet practice owners keep making the same mistake: hiring for the resume, not the role.
The Hidden Costs of Hiring Up
Let's talk numbers. A bad hire costs at least 30% of that employee's first-year earnings: and that's just the direct replacement expense. For a $50,000 position, you're looking at $10,500 in turnover costs alone.
But the real damage goes deeper:
- Lost productivity while the role sits empty or underperforms
- Team morale erosion as other staff pick up the slack or deal with interpersonal friction
- Patient experience decline when your "best hire" treats people poorly or creates bottlenecks
- Leadership bandwidth drain managing performance issues, conflicts, or training someone who won't adapt
You don't just lose money. You lose momentum. And in a healthcare practice already stretched thin, momentum is everything. (If that sounds familiar, check out how practices rebuild momentum after operational setbacks.)
What Your Practice Actually Needs
Here's the shift: stop hiring for "best" and start hiring for function.
Every seat in your practice has a specific job to do. Your front desk needs someone organized, calm under pressure, and patient-facing. Your billing coordinator needs detail orientation and tenacity. Your clinical staff need collaboration and consistency.
The candidate who's overqualified, expensive, or impressive on paper may not excel at any of those things. In fact, they may resent the role, create friction with your existing team, or leave the moment a "better" opportunity appears.
Top candidates leave the market within 10 days. If you're only pursuing elite hires, you're vulnerable: one declined offer leaves you back at square one, scrambling to fill a critical seat while your practice suffers.
Medical practice management isn't about assembling an all-star team. It's about building a functional, cohesive group that works well together and serves your patients consistently.
Hiring for the Seat, Not the Resume
So how do you actually hire what you need?
Define the Seat First
Before you post a job, get clear on what the role requires: not what sounds impressive. Write down:
- Core responsibilities (what this person does daily)
- Key behaviors (how they need to show up)
- Team dynamics (who they'll work with and how)
- Success metrics (what "good" looks like in 90 days)
If you can't answer those questions, you're not ready to hire.
Prioritize Culture and Adaptability
Ask behavioral questions that reveal character: Tell me about a time you made a mistake. How did a previous team handle conflict? What do you do when a patient is upset?
You're not looking for polished answers. You're looking for honesty, self-awareness, and alignment with your practice's values.
Build a Candidate Pool, Not a Wish List
Don't pin your hopes on one "perfect" candidate. Identify 3–5 strong fits and move quickly. The goal isn't to find a unicorn: it's to find someone who can do the job well, fit your culture, and grow with your practice.
If you're building out operational systems while hiring, tools like Marblism can help you create internal workflows and dashboards that make onboarding smoother and set new hires up for success from day one. Strong systems reduce the risk of even a mediocre hire derailing your practice.
Invest in Onboarding and Support
Even the right hire will underperform without proper support. The first 30–90 days determine whether someone thrives or flounders. Clear expectations, consistent training, and regular check-ins matter more than pedigree.
Business coaching for healthcare practices often focuses on this exact gap: helping owners create hiring and onboarding systems that reduce turnover, increase team cohesion, and protect their operational momentum.
The Reframe: Right Beat Best, Every Time
Here's what practice owners get wrong: they think "settling" for someone less impressive means lowering their standards.
It doesn't.
It means raising your standards for what actually matters: fit, function, and follow-through. It means rejecting the ego-driven urge to hire someone who looks good on LinkedIn but won't mesh with your team or serve your patients well.
The best hire isn't the one with the longest resume. It's the one who shows up consistently, works well with others, adapts to your systems, and makes your practice better: not busier or more complicated.
If your hiring strategy has been chasing credentials and wondering why turnover stays high, it's time to flip the script. Hire for the seat. Hire for the team. Hire for the work that actually needs to get done.
What's Next?
Hiring is just one lever in building a sustainable, high-functioning practice. But it's a critical one: and getting it wrong compounds every other operational challenge you're facing.
If you're stuck in a cycle of hiring "impressive" candidates who don't last, or if you're not sure how to define what your practice actually needs, let's talk about it.
Book a 15-minute session and we'll walk through your current team structure, identify gaps, and build a hiring strategy that prioritizes function over flash. You don't need rock stars. You need the right people in the right seats: and that's a completely different game.
Your practice deserves better than high-cost hires who don't fit. Let's fix that.