A medical assistant can be a great addition to any healthcare team. They can help with both patient care tasks like taking vitals and administrative tasks like scheduling appointments. Hiring a good medical assistant can help your facility run smoothly and keep your patients well taken care of.
However, finding well-trained and skilled medical assistants can be challenging. You need to find someone who has some medical knowledge, the ability to perform basic clinical tasks, and great customer service skills.
This article goes over how Stepful can help you find and hire certified medical assistants, where else to look, what to look for when hiring a medical assistant, and more.
How Stepful Helps Healthcare Facilities Hire Medical Assistants & Upskill Existing Medical Assistants
Backed by the American Heart Association and the Harvard Endowment Fund, we can help you find trained and certified medical assistants here at Stepful.
We have a 4-month online medical assistant training program that ends with graduates taking their Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA) exam. Our program consists of 80 clinical hours and an externship to help students get real-world experience so they can jump into working after earning their certification.
There are two ways Stepful can help you hire quality medical assistants: our Hiring as a Service platform and our Learning & Development platform for training existing employees.
Hiring as a Service for Medical Assistants
We can work with you to create an exclusive source of candidates tailored specifically to your organization’s needs. We also do predictive analysis on our students’ performance during training to supply the highest quality candidates.
On average, our partner organizations only have to do 3 interviews with Stepful graduates compared to 6 with non-Stepful grads. In addition, 6-month retention rates with Stepful-trained employees are 75%, compared to 40% with others.
We recently completed a pilot with one healthcare organization in which we trained 100+ healthcare professionals across the United States, improving their employee retention by 80%.
We also offer partner organizations a retention guarantee with which we will refill any roles if a Stepful graduate leaves your organization within 6 months of being hired.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Stepful can help you hire certified medical assistants, please reach out to us at hello@stepful.com.
Learning & Development for Existing Employees
In addition to our Hiring as a Service platform, we can also train your employees without healthcare backgrounds to become medical assistants, coders & billers, and pharmacy technicians.
We also can upskill your current medical assistants to become more skilled through our training program, making them more efficient and effective employees.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Stepful can help you train existing employees to become medical assistants or upskill your existing medical assistants, please reach out to us at hello@stepful.com.
Other Ways to Hire Medical Assistants
The hiring process can be challenging, but there are resources available to organizations looking to hire new medical assistants.
Here are some other ways to find medical assistants:
Post on Job Boards
Posting on job boards is one of the easiest ways to search for new employees. Most job boards charge a fee per posting and some charge per day that the job listing is up on the website.
- National Healthcare Association: Free
- ZipRecruiter: From $16 per day
- Indeed: Free or $5 per day for a sponsored post
- Monster: From $279 per month
- LinkedIn: Free or sliding scale fees
- CareerVitals: From $29.99 per posting
Contact Local Colleges and Training Programs
Colleges are often eager to help their students find opportunities to work when they graduate. If you have a hard time contacting instructors or administrators for training programs, there are usually bulletin boards that allow job postings in school lobbies or front office buildings.
While hiring newly graduated students means you will not get experienced medical assistants, you will know that they have been trained in medical assisting and are committed to learning and becoming proficient in their work.
Use a Medical Assistant Staffing Agency
Many organizations use staffing agencies to meet their medical assisting staffing needs. Medical assistant staffing agencies usually have their own employees who sign short-term contracts with different healthcare organizations.
Staffing agencies are especially helpful for helping out during busy seasons or filling temporary positions while you look for full-time, long-term employees. Because you have to pay the employee and the staffing agency, employees hired through staffing agencies are generally more expensive.
>> Learn more: How Stepful Helps With Healthcare Staffing
Hire a Medical Assistant Recruiter
Hiring a recruiter means you have someone else to do most of the work of finding new employees. Recruiters can also help you research competitive salaries and benefits and may negotiate with new hires.
Recruitment fees are often as high as 20% of your employee's first-year salary. For organizations with high turnover, this can add up quickly.
Ask Current Employees for Referrals
If you have a great work culture, your employees may want to bring their friends and acquaintances in to work for you. Employees can act as recruiters for your organization and use connections they have built through training programs or previous jobs.
In order for this strategy to work, you have to keep your current employees happy. People who love their jobs are much more likely to try to bring others on board.
In addition, many healthcare organizations and other companies offer their employees bonuses for referring people that end up being hired. The average referral bonus ranges from $1,000 to $5,000.
What to Look for When Hiring a Medical Assistant
When you are looking for a medical assistant, you want to find someone with enough skills and knowledge to perform their job well. You also want to find someone whose personality and values are a good fit for your team.
Here are some other things to look for when hiring a medical assistants:
Medical Assistant Certification
Potential employees who have earned their medical assistant certification show that they have enough training and knowledge to pass a certification exam and are likely to perform well in the job.
Certified medical assistants have at least a basic knowledge of patient care, safety, infection control, and healthcare ethics.
There are a few different types of medical assisting certifications. For example, Clinical Certified Medical Assistants (CCMAs) tend to focus more on direct patient care tasks such as taking vital signs and drawing blood
Medical Administrative Assistants (MAAs), on the other hand, focus more on administrative tasks like billing and scheduling.
When hiring a certified medical assistant, make sure you hire one with a certification that makes sense for your company’s needs.
Medical assistant certifications include:
- Certified Medical Assistant (CMA)
- Registered Medical Assistant (RMA)
- Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA)
- Medical Administrative Assistant (MAA)
>> Learn more: CMA vs RMA vs CCMA
Other Certifications
In addition to being a certified medical assistant, you may want to hire candidates who have certifications in:
- Phlebotomy
- EKG
- CPR
- Medical Coding
Work Experience
Hiring a medical assistant with prior medical assisting experience can cut down on the time you have to spend training and educating your new employee. Employees with any kind of healthcare experience should be able to transition smoothly into a medical assisting role.
Candidates with experience in customer service or administrative work may also have easier transitions to medical assisting jobs.
Computer Skills
A lot of medical assisting requires good computer skills. Scheduling appointments, filling out medical records, and billing and coding all require some basic computer skills.
Language Skills
Good communication is essential for all medical assistants. They need to have clear verbal and written communication as well as good telephone skills.
Hiring a bilingual medical assistant can make a big difference for organizations that see a lot of non-English speaking patients.
Attitude and Values
Perhaps the most important thing to look for in a potential candidate is their attitude, work ethic, and willingness to learn. Even the most experienced medical assistant can negatively affect your organization if they have a poor attitude.
Try to find employees that are excited about helping others, eager to learn, and enjoy working as part of a team.
Other Medical Assistant Hiring Resources
Here are some other resources we have related to hiring medical assistants:
