Veterinary Voices – Episode 265

Stuck: We Don't Have Time for This

Julie South [00:00:04]:

Welcome to Veterinary Voices, culture storytelling conversations for forward-thinking vet clinics. I'm Julie South, and this is episode number 265.

Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs, helping forward-thinking vet clinics build recognition so they attract vets and nurses — not just post job ads and pray someone will apply.

We're in the third episode of our Where Vet Clinics Get Stuck with their recruitment series. If you haven't heard episodes 263 and 264, then go back and listen, because they set up what we're about to talk about today — which is this week's stuck: we don't have time for this, Julie.

Before I go further, what I cover in this series may rub some people up the wrong way.

Julie South [00:00:58]:

If that is you, I do apologise. And if you do feel yourself getting defensive as you listen, please — I ask you with a huge amount of respect — to hold that defensiveness in one hand and keep listening anyway, because the clinics that I've seen make the biggest breakthroughs are almost always the ones who have felt that defensiveness first.

Having said that, now I'm going to ask you to stay with me to the end, because I've got a question about where your time is really going.

Julie, they say, we don't have time for this.

And I want to say straight up: I believe you. I really do. Absolutely genuinely do.

Practice managers and clinic owners and head vets and nurses — everybody in a clinic isn't sitting around looking for extra work or waiting for extra work.

Julie South [00:01:54]:

You're juggling rosters. You're chasing locums to cover vacancies you're trying to fill. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, trying to run a recruitment campaign that isn't working.

Of course you don't have time.

But here's what I've noticed: when clinics say they don't have time for this, what they're really picturing is more of what they're already doing.

More platforms to manage. More ads to write and rewrite. More things to post that don't get traction. More of the exhausting, draining, demoralising cycle that they're already trapped in, just under a different name.

And who would want to carry on looking forward to doing more stuff that doesn't work?

So I get it, and that projection is absolutely, completely understandable.

The broken recruitment cycle that you are likely in right now is exhausting. It takes time, energy, and emotional bandwidth, and it keeps taking them month after month after month with nothing to show for it.

Of course, the idea of doing more of that feels dumb, stupid, crazy, and impossible.

But that's not what I'm talking about here.

Julie South [00:03:14]:

What we're talking about is something that, once it's in place, takes less than half an hour a month. Not hours. Not days. Less than half an hour a month.

And the heavy lifting — the capturing what makes your clinic genuinely worth working at, building the picture that gives vets and nurses something real to find when they go looking — that doesn't land on your desk. That's on one of our desks.

Hey, I just want to quickly jump in here with a thought.

If your clinic's been advertising a role for more than a couple of months, the issue might not be the job ad or even the shortage. The real problem could be the gap between when a vet or a nurse reads your ad and then decides whether to apply or not.

We call that gap the job application decision gap.

Julie South [00:04:21]:

To help clinics see whether that might be happening at their clinic, we've designed a super quick eight-question exercise called the Cultural Visibility Stress Test. It's 100% free to do, takes about three minutes, and you can get yours at careers.vetclinicjobs.com.

Now, let's get back to today's show.

We were talking about "we don't have time for this, Julie," and what clinics are really picturing when they say it — because what they're picturing and what they're really talking about are two very completely different things.

What we're talking about is something that, once it's in place, takes about half an hour a month. Thirty minutes — less than — per month.

Writing and rewriting job ads that aren't converting. Logging into multiple platforms to check for applications that aren't coming. Replying to applicants who aren't suitable.

Julie South [00:05:28]:

We know what that's like, right? Because even that takes time and you want to be professional about it.

Interviewing vets and nurses you discover too late aren't right. Starting over.

And underneath all of that, the things that don't show up in the recruitment budgets but absolutely show up in clinic culture: deferring surgeries because you haven't got the staff to do them. Declining leave requests because you need your team in clinic, and then feeling bad when you do that because you know they need a break. Watching sick leave levels rise because people are exhausted, burnt out, running on empty.

Julie South [00:06:16]:

That's not fifteen minutes a month. That's hours every week. And the toll it takes isn't just on the calendar — it's on the people.

What takes more time and energy isn't building something different. It's staying stuck in the broken system.

So when a clinic says, "Hey Julie, we don't have time for this," the this that they are picturing isn't the this that we're offering.

They're picturing more of what's already draining them, and that's the misunderstanding that is absolutely worth correcting.

Two questions before I go.

If you added up the hours that your clinic has spent on recruitment activity in the past three to six months — advertising, rewriting, chasing, replying, interviewing, deferring, declining, managing the fallout — what would that number really look like?

And if less than half an hour a month meant significantly less of all of that, what would that be worth to your team?

If you'd like to chat about what that looks like at your clinic, then please get in touch with me. I'd love to have a chat. julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Thank you for getting to the end.

Julie South [00:07:39]:

Next week: "Isn't this just employer branding?" they say. That's the question I get asked a lot, and one that deserves its own direct answer, its own episode.

And the short answer — spoiler alert — is no. The longer answer explains why that distinction matters more than most clinics realise.

Again, thank you for staying this far.

This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self.

Julie South [00:08:22]:

And remember — when vets and nurses can see that you're their kind of people, you stop hiring strangers, because you're welcoming people who already feel like they belong because you are their kind of clinic.