Barton: ‘Everyone has to start somewhere’

Editor’s Note — This article is part of a series that highlights local businesses hiring in 2020 and provides resume and interview tips for members of the community. If you’re a local business owner and would like to be featured, contact McKenzie Caldwell at 937-402-2570 or [email protected].

The Buckeye Family Eye Clinic in Hillsboro is expanding this year, owner Dr. Tausha Barton told The Times-Gazette. Barton is looking to expand what she calls her “work family.”

“We’re a fun group to work with. We love to have a good, fun work culture, but we need hard workers because we work really hard during the day,” Barton said. “We’re never happy with status quo, so we’re always looking at ways to improve our business and make it more efficient and better for our patients, and we want the whole team to be able to contribute to ways to make our business better.”

Barton started Buckeye Family Eye Clinic in 2004, and she said the industry is unique.

“We have the medical background: I’ve diagnosed brain tumors, high blood pressure, heart disease in people who didn’t know they had those things prior to their appointment,” Barton said. “We’ve got the vision aspect: obviously we’re here to meet people’s visual needs with glasses and contact lenses. But then our industry also has a fashion component.”

Though Barton said the move to the new space, which will be located at 748 N. High St. at the corner of SR 62 and SR 138, doesn’t have a set date yet, it will take place this year, and she’s looking to hire new employees immediately.

”We’re currently and actively looking to find team members to get into place now,” Barton said. “That way, when we move to our new location, we’re not learning new people and teaching them new skills — we’re just learning the new space.”

Barton said she’s open to hiring both part-time and full-time employees.

The clinic is currently open Monday through Thursday, but as part of the expansion, Barton said she plans to add Friday and Saturday hours. However, Barton said her goal is for all full-time employees, who may work 11-hour days, to still have three-day weekends.

“We’re hoping to still provide a high-quality service but yet make sure everybody has a nice three-day weekend so we can have downtime away from work,” Barton said. “We’re a very family-oriented business, so we want to make sure that we work hard for our patient when we’re there in the office, but we want to make sure that our staff have time to decompress and spend time with their families. We want to still be flexible enough with their work schedule that if they have a kid or grandchild with an event that we can shift people around and make sure they’re not missing that event or other important family functions and activities.”

Barton said that, above all, she’s looking for team members who fit into the clinic’s culture.

“The culture of our office is extremely important to us. We don’t just hire someone based on their previous skills. They have to fit into our work family, so those dynamics have to be there,” Barton said. ”We’re no-drama. We’re here to take care of people, and we want to have fun while we do it. At the end of the day, we’re a work family, and we want to get along and have a great work dynamic and environment.”

Barton is hiring four types of positions: front office, back office, optical department and marketing, though each employee will be cross-trained to fill in as needed in other areas of the office. In each of these positions, she’s looking for reliable people with fun, warm personalities and typing skills.

Front-office staff members check patients in and out, assess patients’ benefits compared to their needs, and handle billing and insurance.

“We really want a great front-office personality who can connect with our patients, make them feel comfortable and welcome to our office. They should have a lot of attention to detail,” Barton said. “In the medical industry in general, you have to have a lot of attention to detail. And typing skills. We can’t have people hunting and pecking because it’s all about efficiency and data entry.”

Though Barton isn’t looking for a specific typing rate, she said people know if they have to “hunt-and-peck” for keys while typing or entering data.

Back-office staff members take patients’ medical histories; update patients’ medications, allergies lists, and the reasons for their visits; and perform initial testing to prepare the patients for Barton.

“A lot of times we have people with backgrounds in medical assisting apply for back-office positions, but I have current staff members who have zero medical background whatsoever, and they have blossomed into phenomenal back-office staff,” Barton said. “Those people have great personalities. I’ve been able to teach them skills and the language of the industry that they didn’t have before.”

For the marketing position, Barton is looking for someone experienced with social media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook and who has computer and photography skills and the ability to create and edit videos.

“We’ve never had a marketing person, so this is new territory for us,” Barton said. “I want someone I can throw ideas at and they just take the bull by the horns and come back and present to me or to the team.”

Barton said she likes to think outside the box when engaging with the community through social media.

“I hired a guy last year to make a custom rap video specifically for our business,” she said. “Someone put that on our Facebook page, and we got so many comments and shares.”

Members of the optical department will fit glasses, train patients on how to wear contact lenses, determine patients’ work and leisure needs to recommend products, and adjust and repair glasses.

“As a team, we will all pick up different things about a patient, but the person in the optical department is the one who’s going to be talking to the patient about those different products and how they would meet their visual needs, so the patient can choose what’s going to best work for them. Our goal is to not only meet our patients’ visual needs but to meet them in a way that will fit in the budget they’re working with.”

Barton said that a background in the industry is helpful for someone applying for a position in the clinic’s optical department, though if they’re not currently licensed, an apprenticeship in the office can lead to an optician’s license.

“At some point, everyone has to start somewhere, so whether someone has a background in the industry or not, we’re willing to train someone who has the right personality,” Barton said. “We’re looking for very friendly personalities. I can teach skills; I can’t teach personality or a person to want to care for and help other people.”

Barton said that the pay rate for each position will be based on candidates’ experience.

Resume and interview tips

Spend time on your resume — “[A good resume] is well-organized with no typographical errors. I can’t tell you how many resumes have a lot of typos and regular grammar errors. In my opinion, if those things are on a resume, you don’t have attention to detail,” Barton said. “Somebody really serious about their resume is not only going to look over it, but they’re also going to have a couple other people look at it ahead of time.”

Don’t overwhelm with your resume — “Some people have almost too much information on their resumes,” Barton said. “If someone has paragraphs on their previous jobs, I wouldn’t be able to look at it and know what the job history is, what their position was, how long they were there, and what duties they had. Use bullet points for duties. Include the time frame you worked there.”

Dress appropriately — “Look like you want the job,” Barton said. “Be well put together. No jeans. Kind of like a business casual or dressy work clothes.”

Showcase who you are during interviews — “Be yourself. You don’t want to be hired into a work environment that you don’t fit into,” Barton said. “I never want a person to leave a job to come to our business if it’s not something that’s going to work out. Don’t pretend you’re somebody you’re not; don’t pretend you have skills that you don’t have. Tell me, ‘This is what I can bring to your business, this is what can offer you, this is who I am.’ Showcase who you are. Within a couple weeks, the employer and the staff are going to figure out if you’re not who you said you were anyway.”

To apply for one of the positions at Buckeye Family Eye Clinic, drop off your resume and the contact information for three references who aren’t related to you at the clinic’s current location — 205 S. High St. in Hillsboro — or email them to [email protected]. You can find Buckeye Family Eye Clinic at buckeyefamilyeyeclinic.net or on Facebook as “Buckeye Family Eye Clinic, Inc.”

Reach McKenzie Caldwell at 937-402-2570.

Barton
https://www.timesgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2020/01/web1_tausha-barton-edit-2.jpgBarton
Eye doctor wants people with fun, warm personalities

By McKenzie Caldwell

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