"But Julie! We Need Someone NOW!” — When Urgency Blocks Recruitment Progress - 263
When veterinary clinics begin recognising the reactive recruitment cycle, certain phrases often start appearing.
They sound practical — but they’re often the cycle defending itself.
In this episode of Veterinary Voices, Julie South begins a new series exploring the objections that surface when clinics start considering a different way to approach recruitment.
The first phrase she hears most often is:
“Julie, we need someone now — not in six months’ time.”
When a clinic has been covering a vacancy for months and the team is exhausted, the idea of building something that takes time can feel impossible.
But Julie explains why this objection often appears after clinics have already spent months — sometimes years — trying to fill the role through job advertising alone.
The urgency is real.
But the deeper problem is usually that recognition only begins when the vacancy appears — meaning every recruitment effort starts from unknown, under pressure.
Julie explains why even a short, well-built information bridge — a clear picture of who the clinic is and what it’s actually like to work there — can dramatically change what happens after someone reads a job ad.
Because before vets and nurses decide whether to apply, they will almost always search for the clinic behind the advert.
What they find in that moment either strengthens conviction — or quietly ends the process.
Stay to the end for a question about what “we need someone now” may already be costing your clinic.
In This Episode
01:22 – The objection Julie hears most often: “We need someone now”
04:37 – The Job Application Decision Gap and the Cultural Visibility Stress Test
05:30 – Building an information bridge between job ads and applications
09:52 – Two questions about what reactive recruitment may already be costing your clinic
Mentioned in This Episode
Cultural Visibility Stress Test
A short eight-question exercise designed to help clinics see whether the Job Application Decision Gap may be affecting their recruitment.
It takes about three minutes and is free to complete.
About Julie South
Julie South is the founder of VetClinicJobs and host of Veterinary Voices.
She works with forward-thinking veterinary clinics that want to move beyond reactive job advertising by building recruitment infrastructure that creates recognition before a vacancy appears.
When vets and nurses can see that a clinic is their kind of place, recruitment stops being a start-from-scratch exercise every time a role opens.
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
Julie South [00:00:05]: Welcome to Veterinary Voices, culture storytelling conversations for forward-thinking vet clinics. I'm Julie South, and this is episode 263.
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.
Last week we closed out the five-month recruitment cycle series — that was episodes 258 through to 262. If you haven't listened to those yet, go back and do it, because this series builds on that.
We're starting something new today, and this one is about where clinics get stuck. When clinics start to see the reactive recruitment cycle clearly, that's when certain phrases start coming to the fore — phrases that feel like practical concerns but are really the cycle defending itself.
Julie South [00:01:22]: The first one — the one I hear most often, arriving with the most urgency — is this: we need someone now, Julie, not in six months' time.
Before I go further, what I'm talking about in this series may rub some people up the wrong way. If you feel yourself getting defensive as you listen, I ask you, please, with a huge amount of respect, to hold that defensiveness in one hand and keep listening anyway.
The clinics that I've seen make the biggest breakthroughs are usually the ones who felt that defensiveness to start with. Stay with me to the end, because I've got a question about what now is actually costing you.
Julie, we need someone now. I get that. I absolutely do.
Julie South [00:02:26]: I understand it. When your team is exhausted, when consults are backing up and you've been covering a vacancy for months — I have today been on the phone with two clinics that have been covering vacancies for years.
The idea of building something that takes time feels like being told to plant a tree while your house is on fire. I know that. I get it.
But let's be honest about what's happening when a clinic says this. It's usually that they've been advertising for a long time — months and months. Today I spoke with one clinic that's been advertising for four years, and another for five.
They've been on multiple platforms, they've rewritten jobs, they've had premium placement, they've tried random tactics — the full cycle, sometimes over and over and over. They are done.
Julie South [00:03:31]: They need it solved. And then someone — me, usually — starts talking about building recognition infrastructure, and they hear "six months before anything happens."
That's not what I said, but I do understand why it lands that way. It's because the urgency is real, but it's pointing at the wrong problem.
The reason you need someone now — even if you've only been advertising for a few months, not years — is because you've been reactive. You're only starting to build recognition when the vacancy appears, starting from unknown every single time, under pressure every single time.
Reactive becomes desperate. And desperate clinics always need someone now because they're always in catch-up mode. The now isn't the problem. The always is.
Julie South [00:04:37]: Hey, I just want to quickly jump in here with a thought. If your clinic's been advertising a role for more than a few months, the issue might not be the job ad or even the professional shortage.
The real problem could be the gap between when a vet or nurse reads your ad and decides whether to apply or not. That's what we call the job application decision gap.
To help clinics see whether that might be happening at their clinic, we've designed a quick eight-question exercise called the Cultural Visibility Stress Test. It's completely free, takes about three minutes, and you'll find it at careers.vetclinicjobs.com.
Now let's get back to today's show.
Julie South [00:05:30]: Urgency doesn't mean nothing can be done. I've worked with clinics that came to me at the end of their runway — a year or more of advertising, nothing working, team at breaking point — and we built them an information bridge. A quality-first picture of who they are and what it's actually like to work at their clinic.
Then together we laced up our shoes with the intention of sprinting hard for twelve weeks. And in every one of those situations, we didn't need anywhere near that much runway.
One clinic filled their vacancy in seven weeks. Another in five. These are clinics that had been advertising for over a year — and we filled the role in weeks.
I'm not promising that as a standard outcome. But even a short, well-built information bridge outperforms a year of job ads — not because of speed, but because of quality.
Julie South [00:06:43]: Before vets and nurses hit that formal apply button, they will Google you. What they find either builds conviction or kills it.
Time in market isn't the variable. Quality of what's there when someone goes looking — that's the variable.
Those two clinics had one thing in common. They did what we said. All of it. They didn't hedge, they didn't run parallel job ad campaigns, they didn't half-commit. They were all in.
Julie South [00:07:28]: They treated recruitment as an active, accumulating activity — like compound interest — not a passive one. The more actively you participate, the faster it builds and gains momentum.
So when a clinic says "we need someone now, Julie," my honest answer is: yes, and that urgency can work in your favour. But only if you bring it to the process, not just to the problem.
One more thing. "We need someone now" often assumes that building recognition infrastructure means you stop advertising. That's not what I'm talking about. It doesn't. You can do both.
Julie South [00:08:13]: As recognition builds — even over a few weeks — your existing ad starts working better. When vets and nurses click away from the ad to do their due diligence, they find something worth finding.
The ad hasn't changed. What changes is what happens after they leave it.
Some questions before I go. How much time have you already spent trying to fill this role the reactive way? And what has it actually cost you — not just in job board fees, but in your team?
If recruitment is an accumulating asset rather than a one-time cost transaction, what would it mean to start treating it that way? This week, not on your next vacancy.
If you're ready to have that conversation, email me: julie@vetclinicjobs.com.
Next week we're looking at "I can't afford it right now, Julie" — and what the reactive recruitment cycle is really costing, because the affordability conversation looks very different when you add it all up.
Julie South [00:09:52]: This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self.
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.
Until next week.