Group Practice Hiring: Find the Right Fit Every Time

When I first started hiring many many years ago, I used to think hiring was just finding someone with the right experience and a good personality fit. But over time, I realized that approach doesn’t work and it’s especially true when it comes to group practice hiring. Whether you’re bringing on therapists, an intake coordinator, or a client care coordinator, or beyond, the wrong choice can slow down growth, increase turnover, and create stress you don’t need.

The good news? There’s a private practice hiring process that actually works, one that focuses on skills, traits, and behaviors instead of just resumes and gut instincts. Once I started using it, my hires became stronger, onboarding got easier, and my business ran more smoothly. And even though I use it in my website design business, you can use it as a group practice owner, too!

In my web design business, I made pretty much every hiring mistake you can think of:

• I relied too heavily on gut feelings during interviews, which turned out to be pretty unreliable
• I focused more on culture and values (like whether they’d be welcoming to diverse clients) than on whether they could actually excel at the job, mostly because I didn’t know how to measure potential job performance
• My job descriptions were detailed but I had no idea how to actually test whether candidates could deliver on those requirements
• I’d ask generic interview questions that told me nothing about how someone actually worked or handled challenges

It took a few frustrating hiring mistakes before I figured out I needed a system that would actually help me predict who’d thrive in the role.

That’s when a friend shared competency-based hiring with me and it changed everything.

The Real Cost of Getting Hiring Wrong

A bad hire isn’t just about the money you lose (though that stings). It’s about everything else that comes with it.

There’s the time you spend training someone who ultimately doesn’t work out. The stress of having difficult conversations when they’re not meeting expectations. The impact on team morale when they are welcoming a team member one day and saying goodbye the next.

And then there’s the client side. When you hire someone who doesn’t have the right specialization or can’t work the hours you actually need, you end up disappointing clients who could have been getting help. Or worse, you compromise your standards just because you’re afraid someone better won’t come along.

I’ve talked to dozens of group practice owners who tell me the same thing: they hired someone who looked great on paper and seemed nice enough, but turned out to be completely wrong for the role. Maybe they couldn’t handle difficult client calls, or they got flustered every time something unexpected came up, or they didn’t have the drive to co-build their caseload.

You can teach someone your procedures, but developing core competencies like resilience, customer focus, or accountability? That takes months or years of coaching and mentoring and most group practice owners don’t have the time or resources to rebuild someone’s working style from scratch. It’s so much easier to hire someone who already demonstrates these competencies and just needs to learn your specific processes.

And this is exactly why having a systematic approach to hiring makes such a difference. It takes the guesswork out of finding people who are the right fit for your practice.

What Is Competency-Based Hiring?

Instead of just looking at where someone worked before or what degree they have and if they vibe with you, this approach focuses on the actual skills, traits, and behaviors that make someone great at a specific job.

Here’s how it works: instead of asking “Where did you work?” or “Do you have experience with X?”, you identify the core competencies someone needs to succeed in your specific role. Then you design interview questions and evaluation methods that reveal whether they actually have those competencies.

The concept has been around for a while. There are research-backed frameworks like the Lominger Competency Model that identified 67 different competencies (which is way more than needed for hiring in a group practice). Thankfully, Korn Ferry simplified it down to a much more manageable list with straightforward terms like “Drives Results,” “Nimble Learning,” and “Instills Trust.”

For example, if you get clear that you need someone who can handle unclear situations without getting flustered, you can map that to a competency called “manage ambiguity.” Next in your hiring process, you don’t just ask “Can you handle unclear situations?” and instead you ask them to tell you about a specific time they had to act without having all the information they wanted. Their story reveals how they actually behave in those moments.

The Key Competencies You Need to Know

Here are some of the most useful competencies for group practice hiring:

• Plans and Aligns – Organizes work to meet deadlines and keeps multiple priorities straight
• Ensures Accountability – Takes responsibility for mistakes and follows through on commitments
• Communicates Effectively – Shares information clearly in writing and conversation
• Instills Trust – Gains confidence through honesty and builds rapport quickly
• Customer Focus – Anticipates client needs and genuinely cares about helping people
• Manages Ambiguity – Stays effective when situations are unclear or constantly changing
• Collaborates – Works well with colleagues and contributes to team success
• Nimble Learning – Quickly learns new information and applies it effectively
• Drives Results – Pushes through obstacles to achieve goals and meet expectations

The beauty of this system is that you can mix and match these competencies based on what your specific role actually needs. A therapist role might need “Instills Trust” and “Nimble Learning,” while your front desk coordinator might need “Plans and Aligns” and “Customer Focus.”

Traditional Hiring Vs. Competency Based Hiring Compared

The difference is huge. Traditional hiring often focuses on:

• Years of experience in similar roles
• Educational background and certifications
• Whether you “click” during the interview
• General personality fit

Competency-based hiring focuses on:

• Specific behaviors they’ve demonstrated in past situations
• How they approach problems and challenges
• Their actual working style and decision-making process
• Evidence of the exact traits your role requires

Even though I learned this running a web design agency, it translates perfectly to group practice settings.

Why This Actually Works

When you hire this way, you:

• Focus on what really matters for success in the role, not just impressive job titles
• Give everyone on your team a consistent way to evaluate candidates
• Take some of the guesswork (and unconscious bias) out of the process
• End up with people who stick around longer and perform better

Three Common Roles and What to Look For

Let me show you how this plays out for three roles you’re probably familiar with. For each one, I’ve picked three key competencies from the Korn Ferry framework, plus some interview questions that actually get at what you need to know.

Client Care Coordinator (Admin/Front Desk)

The 3 competencies that matter most:

1. Plans and Aligns Can they juggle multiple priorities without dropping balls?
2. Ensures Accountability Will they own their mistakes and follow through?
3. Communicates Effectively Can they represent your practice professionally?

Questions to ask:

• “Walk me through a typical day when you had way too much on your plate. How did you handle it?”
• “Tell me about a time you messed something up. What happened, and what did you do about it?”
• “How do you make sure someone understands what you’re trying to tell them, especially if it’s complicated?”

Intake Coordinator

The 3 competencies that matter most:

1. Instills Trust Can they make anxious callers feel comfortable and confident?
2. Customer Focus Do they genuinely care about helping people get what they need?
3. Manages Ambiguity Can they handle situations where there’s no clear playbook?

Questions to ask:

• “Tell me about the most challenging call you’ve ever handled. What made it difficult, and how did you get through it?”
• “Give me an example of when you went above and beyond to help someone.”
• “Describe a time when you had to make a decision without having all the information you wanted.”

Therapist

The 3 competencies that matter most:

1. Instills Trust The foundation of all therapeutic relationships
2. Collaborates Can they work well with your team and refer appropriately?
3. Nimble Learning Are they committed to growing their skills?

Questions to ask:

• “Tell me about a client relationship that was challenging to build. How did you approach it?”
• “How have you worked with colleagues to get better outcomes for clients?”
• “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned recently, and how are you using it in your practice?”

How AI Makes This Even Better

AI can genuinely make this hiring process more effective:

For uncovering competencies: Ask AI to prioritize the top 3 competencies to hire for when hiring for any given role.

For writing job descriptions: Use AI to help craft descriptions that attract candidates with the right traits from the start.

For screening applications: Copy and paste a candidate’s application into ChatGPT and ask it to evaluate it against your key competencies. You can also ask it to rank applicants against each other.

For developing questions: Ask AI to write the interview questions that will reveal the candidates level of competency.

For interview analysis: If you record your interviews (with permission), you can get a transcript and have AI flag behaviors that align with what you’re looking for.

Even with AI, you will still need to make the final calls. But having AI as a competency-based-hiring assistant can help you spot patterns you might miss when you’re in the thick of your hiring process.

Why This Matters Even More for Group Practices

When you’re scaling beyond just yourself, consistency becomes everything. You need to know that whether you’re interviewing candidates, or your partner is, or your practice manager is, everyone’s evaluating people against the same standards.

This approach gives you that consistency. It also means new team members know what success looks like from day one, which makes onboarding smoother and helps people hit their stride faster.

Getting the hire right the first time saves you months of stress and thousands of dollars.

Start Small and Find Your Right Fit

Before your next hire, pick just one role and identify the three competencies that matter most for success. Build your interview questions around those and see what happens.

You don’t have to overhaul your entire process overnight. Just try it once and see if the person you hire using this method feels like a better fit than your previous hires.

The goal isn’t perfection on the first try. It’s about getting better at predicting who will actually thrive in your practice environment, work well with your team, and stick around long enough to make the investment in training them worthwhile.

When you consistently find the right fit, everything else gets easier. Your team works better together, clients get better care, and you spend way less time putting out fires or having difficult conversations.

(Still feeling overwhelmed by the hiring process? I guide group practice owners in building hiring systems that actually work. If you want to walk through how this competency-based approach would work for a specific role you’re hiring for, let’s chat.)