International Dental Hygiene preparation program

Greetings fellow DHs!                                                               July 12, 2009

We are writing to give you jobseekers an update on our progress. As was mentioned in the previous newsletter, we have been working on a new strategy aimed at helping you to effectively and successfully obtain overseas employment. We decided to do this based on the redundancy of issues and questions that continue to arise from dental hygienists seeking work through our company. There are still many opportunities for overseas employment but there is a lot more competition with the recent expansion of the EU. As a company, we have access to many of these advertised positions but more is needed than simply forwarding your credentials to help you secure your longed for international dental hygiene position. Therefore, our new format is designed to ‘coach’ prospective job seekers, individually, through the application and interview process. In addition to other improvements, we have designed and written a handbook, a guide for seeking overseas employment, starting with Switzerland. The material is based on research, current trends and actual experiences. This guide will touch on a wide range of subjects to help prepare you mentally for what you may encounter while seeking work abroad and for what you may encounter as you slowly adjust to your new surroundings. The chapters are designed to address many of the frequently asked questions and scenarios that jobseekers new to the overseas experience may have and issues that newly hired hygienists in overseas offices encounter. This first guide is based solely on the Switzerland experience but many of the principles contained therein can be applied to other European countries that employ North American hygienists.

As we also mentioned in our previous newsletter, our goal is to help you become an independent seeker of international dental hygiene employment. This means that we will help ‘coach’ and prepare you initially for your job search but afterward you should be able to independently and effectively advertise yourself to almost any international dental audience. Our ‘coaching’ and preparing will include:

• Help with CV and letter of introduction development along with the translation of these documents into the indicated language.
• Teaching proper overseas job-seeking etiquette.
• Preparation for the interview
• A copy of the guidebook which provides an overview of the Swiss culture as it relates to dental hygiene, the history of Dental Hygiene in Switzerland, and what you should know before accepting employment – including but not limited to the contract, salary, insurance and mandatory deductions, relocating and settling down, responsibilities and expectations.

Once you have completed the ‘coaching’ process, we will provide you with names and addresses of dentists seeking hygienists in the part of Switzerland that you might be interested in. If there are none in your chosen area, we will provide you with the names of those dentists in the nearby area(s) or you may choose a different area. This is an improvement from the previous method we used because you will now be in control of your own job search. You will be responsible for making the initial contact and for the subsequent follow-up correspondences. Thereafter, no matter how you come upon an open dental hygiene position abroad, you will already have some knowledge of how to proceed with properly advertising yourself and competitively applying for the position.

For those of you who have used our old method for applying for work overseas and who have already submitted your credentials to us, please contact us for information on how to proceed under this new format. Those of you who may be EU citizens or who may already be familiar with a European job search, please also contact us to see how you can specifically benefit under our new format. Unlike our old format, it is no longer our goal to simply forward your credentials to dentists without being sure that our candidates can effectively compete for an open position. This new format is, therefore, designed to better equip you with what you need in order to successfully compete with hygienists from other countries and obtain the overseas position that you have worked so hard to get.

Please note: The aforementioned guide is being edited at present and will be available for print and distribution this August 2009.

The team @ Dentallynx International

A change in our focus

As many of you who are interested in working overseas have noticed, our ‘dentlynx’ website has not been very active over the last months. Many applied to the dental hygiene position that was posted for Switzerland with no success. This dentist did contact some of the candidates and was pleased with some of the interactions but still felt it in his best interest to hire a local candidate. Some of his feedback was understandable but left us in a quandary as to how to meet some of the demands of an international dentist like him.  It seemed neither in our best interest nor in the best interest of our job seekers to continue following the same informal method of simply forwarding over resumes in the ‘American’ way.

Another dilemma was how to meet the changing demands of a European market that is built upon catering to its own professionals. As many of you may have heard, since the early 2000’s, European hygienists from the various countries in the EU take precedence over non-EU nationals when applying for open positions. In addition to this, with the changing worldwide economy, we have also gotten requests from non-North American trained hygienists seeking positions in Europe. This leads us to believe that with fewer jobs being offered worldwide and the ability of other foreign nationals to relocate, this job market will be increasingly more competitive.

Lastly, some hygienists have contacted us with questions on how to proceed with negotiations with an employer they are in contact with from other sources. Hygienists who have discovered positions abroad via other mediums still seem to be ill-prepared on how to proceed even after they have discovered some interest. This is naturally because each country follows its own protocols for applying for positions and marketing oneself effectively. Unless you have lived in any of these countries, these procedures are likely foreign to you.

We understand that the desire to live abroad for many of you is real and that it can be frustrating when it seems like your attempts only lead to disappointment. This is why we are reorganizing our efforts in attempt to assist you more effectively. Our new format will be designed to help prepare you for an international market. Many of you are as qualified, if not more qualified than your EU counterparts but the key is to market yourself as such. It is our hope that our new design will put you on equal footing with your foreign counterparts, if not by nationality, by presentation.

Please bear with us as we make these changes over the next few weeks. We will keep you informed as we progress. Also, for those who are still sincerely interested in working abroad, these changes will imply effort on your part; much more than simply forwarding your credentials to ‘dentlynx’ and allowing someone else to be the medium for your job search.  You will be much more involved in the success of your job search and it will hopefully enable you to grow into an autonomous international dental hygiene candidate for the future.

Thank you for your patience.

The Team @ Dentallynx International

International Dental Jobs

Hello dental job seeker,

Bored with the average job board?

Try something refreshingly new! Check out our temp availability calendar. Check in from time to time to see what jobs are out there for any down time you may have. Also post your own availability for other office’s emergencies.

Also, did you know that in many European countries, the standard of dentistry is the same as North America? Like Switzerland, for instance. True, some may fall shamefully short but those are the exceptions.

Did you know that you can possibly find a dental job overseas almost as easily as you can in North America? Imagine how cool it would be to wake up everyday to a new experience!

Would you like to know how?

Visit us at www.dentlynx.com or write me at info@dentlynx.com for more info.

Cheers,
Angela
Dentallynx International, LLC