After Hours - What The Job Ad Never Says - 279
If you're responsible for hiring at your vet clinic, do you have dread words? Words you know you have to include in the job ad, but the moment you type them you can already feel the applications not coming? This episode is about two of those words: after-hours. In the fourth episode of The Elephant In The Room, Julie South looks at why "shared across the team" tells a vet or nurse almost nothing — and why the clinics that have genuinely solved after-hours are sitting on something worth saying...
If you're responsible for hiring at your vet clinic, do you have dread words? Words you know you have to include in the job ad, but the moment you type them you can already feel the applications not coming?
This episode is about two of those words: after-hours.
In the fourth episode of The Elephant In The Room, Julie South looks at why "shared across the team" tells a vet or nurse almost nothing — and why the clinics that have genuinely solved after-hours are sitting on something worth saying, and saying nothing.
Episode notes
Most vet clinic job ads that mention after-hours say the same thing: shared across the team, rostered. Nothing else. Yet behind those words, the experience can be completely different from one clinic to the next.
This episode looks at what that difference actually looks like — from a clinic where most of the team want to be on the after-hours roster, to one where one or two people quietly carry the load while the roster looks balanced on paper.
The key example: a small animal clinic whose owner doesn't call it after-hours at all. She calls it the Emergency and Critical Care roster. Same obligation — completely different story around it. The financial reward is genuine, recovery time is real and honoured, and being on the roster is a choice most of the team actively make.
The episode argues that clinics which have built something genuinely fair and well-supported around after-hours have specific, true things to say that very few clinics are saying — and that vets and nurses who'd thrive in that environment can self-identify from the way it's described. Generic language gives them nothing to go on.
This is the fourth episode in The Elephant In The Room — a series examining the things everyone in veterinary knows and almost no one says out loud.
About your host
Julie South is the founder of VetClinicJobs and the host of Veterinary Voices. She has been in veterinary recruitment since 2019 and is known for her work in culture storytelling — helping forward-thinking vet clinics build the kind of genuine, specific culture evidence that attracts Their Kind of People long before any job ad runs.
Julie has spoken on culture storytelling and employer branding at VetEXPO in Melbourne and works with clinics across Australasia and beyond who want vets and nurses to be excited about going to work on Monday mornings — for all the right reasons.
Struggling to get results from your job advertisements?
If so, then shining online as a good employer is essential to attracting the types of veterinary professionals who're a perfect cultural fit for your clinic.
The VetClinicJobs job board is the place to post your next job vacancy - to find out more get in touch with Lizzie at VetClinicJobs
Veterinary Voices — Episode 279
Elephants in the Room: After Hours — What the Ad Never Says
[00:00]
If you're responsible for hiring at your clinic — for writing the job ads, for posting them, for hoping something comes back — do you have dread words?
Words you know you have to include, but the moment you type them you can already feel the applications not coming in.
Today is about two of those dread words: after hours.
Almost every ad that includes them says exactly the same thing. Something like "shared across the team" or "rostered." But not much else.
Welcome to Veterinary Voices — culture storytelling conversations for forward-thinking vet clinics. I'm Julie South and this is Episode 279, the fourth in our Elephants in the Room series.
Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs — helping vet clinics get applications from their kind of people.
Stay to the end — because today I'm going to tell you about a clinic where most of the team actually want to be on the after hours roster. And why.
[01:20]
At one clinic, "after hours shared across the team" means a fair, well-paid roster with real recovery time built in. Generous pay. A genuine three-day weekend after an on-call weekend — and they mean it. Come in late after an overnight call. That's expected, not just permitted.
At another clinic, it means one or two people carry the load while the roster looks balanced on paper. A tired team. A manager who says the right things but can't quite hide the eye roll when someone tries to act on them.
Both ads say "shared across the team."
The experience is completely different. And the vet or nurse reading that job ad has no way of telling which one they're looking at.
[02:30]
I know of a clinic — a small animal clinic — where after hours is not a problem.
The vets and nurses there don't dread it. Most of them want to be on it.
They want to be on it because the owner pays generously. Not a token premium that technically counts as a little bit extra. Genuinely well. Meaningful financial reward.
A weekend on call is followed by a real three-day weekend — planned in advance, honoured, and protected. Not time in lieu that quietly gets swallowed by the next busy week.
If someone was called in overnight and needs to come in late or leave early the next day, that's absolutely fine. Expected. No eye rolls, no sighs, no subtle suggestion that the team is being inconvenienced.
Being on the roster is also a choice. Not everyone has to be on it — and most of the team genuinely want to be.
[03:50]
There's one more thing this owner does differently.
She doesn't call it after hours. She calls it the emergency and critical care roster.
Same obligation. Completely different story around it.
[04:15]
Quick interruption — shameless plug. If you're wondering what a vet or nurse finds when they search for your clinic right now, book a one-hour consult with me. We'll look at it together through fresh eyes. julie@vetclinicjobs.com
[04:30]
The emergency and critical care roster tells a vet or nurse something real.
It says the work matters. When you're called in, it's down to your skills. There's no specialist backup — it's just you making the difference.
For some vets and nurses, that's exactly the work they want. For others, it isn't — and they can rule themselves out before they ever apply.
Both are good outcomes.
"After hours shared across the team" does none of that. It's vanilla. It raises questions and leaves them unanswered.
[05:20]
Here's the elephant in the room.
The clinics that have genuinely solved after hours have something specific and true to say. Very few of them are saying it.
Most clinics say nothing — not because they're hiding it, but because it hasn't occurred to them that they have something meaningful to share. That they've built a system that works, and the team are comfortable with it.
The ad template doesn't have a field for "here's what after hours recovery looks like at our clinic." So nobody fills it in.
Meanwhile, vets and nurses who would thrive in a well-run after hours environment read the same two words on every job ad and assume it's all the same.
[06:30]
The clinic that describes what their after hours genuinely looks like — the pay, the recovery, the culture, what they call it — that's the clinic that stands out.
Specific, where everyone else is vague.
If you've built something you're genuinely proud of, say so. In your own team's words. That's the culture evidence that makes the difference.
And if you haven't built it yet — "after hours shared across the team" is one of those phrases that gets skimmed past or eye-rolled over. Because there's nothing behind it. It's vague. No evidence. Nothing specific about what "shared" actually means at your clinic.
Email me: julie@vetclinicjobs.com
[07:30]
Next week in Elephants in the Room, we're talking about pay — what clinics advertise, what they actually offer, and why the gap between the two is getting harder to hide.
This is Julie South, signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self — because you're working with your kind of people.
And remember: the clinics that have solved after hours have something genuinely worth saying.
The question is whether you're saying it.
Until next week.