How can you help vets and nurses picture themselves working at your clinic?

Could a vet or a nurse picture themselves in your clinic’s Culture Story? Would it make them want to apply for a job at your clinic?

Hello and welcome. I’m Julie South, and you’re listening to Veterinary Voices—culture storytelling conversations for vet clinics that want to be found by Their Kind of People: the vets and nurses who genuinely, absolutely can’t wait to start working at your clinic.

Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs, helping clinics give vets and nurses the answers they need to their job application questions before they apply.

In this REAL•CULTURE•STORY series, we’re unpacking the framework we use—we as in us at VetClinicJobs—when we’re working with clinics to create, tell and share their Culture Stories.

This is episode number 295, and today we’re looking at Specificity: the details that help a vet or nurse imagine what working at your clinic could feel like—and then think, “That sounds like My Kind of Clinic.”

Stay to the end, please, for this week’s how-to takeaway: how to Spot it, Source it and Share it as a Culture Story from your own clinic.

How can I show vets and nurses what it’s like to work at my clinic?

Last week, in episode 294, we looked at Evidence: whether your team’s experiences give a vet or a nurse good reason to believe the story they’re forming of your clinic. As always, the link is in the show notes.

Today, we move into STORY.

REAL is all about what’s seen. CULTURE is what’s understood. And STORY is what’s felt.

And we start STORY with S for Specificity.

We’ve used specific examples throughout the series. This time, how do those details help a vet or a nurse imagine real life working at your clinic?

As an example, can that vet or nurse imagine being the one asking for help and how their colleague’s response might feel?

Let’s use the asking-for-help example.

In episode 290, we talked about what a clinic’s response to an eye roll helped people understand about its values. And then in 294, last week, we looked at team accounts showing what happens when someone asks for help.

Now imagine a nurse considering a move. They’ve read a nurse’s account in your Culture Story Centre. It goes something like this:

“When I needed help with a nurse consult, another nurse helped me.”

Good. But there’s still plenty of grey left for them to colour in themselves.

Did the colleague take over? Did they explain anything? Did the person asking feel like an inconvenience?

Now listen to how a nurse could describe it:

“I was about to do my first nurse consult on my own. I’d prepared, but I was worried about fitting everything into the appointment. Everyone looked busy. I said to one of the experienced nurses, ‘Have you got a minute? Can I go through my plan with you, please?’

“She said, ‘Sure, tell me what you’re thinking.’

“We went through it together. She asked what I wanted to cover and helped me work out what to prioritise. I went into the consult knowing where to start.”

That’s the story.

The concern before asking: “I was worried.”

Then the other nurse’s words: “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

And then lastly, going into that first consult knowing where to start.

Now, someone who’s been made to feel stupid in their current clinic for asking something similar might prick up their ears at that response.

They might think, “I’d love for someone to respond to my questions like that. Getting help working things through would be absolutely great. It would be amazing.”

It’s those relatable kinds of details that help a nurse reading the story imagine asking for help at your clinic.

How do I show what a supportive veterinary team looks like in practice?

So which details can help a vet or nurse picture working here? Those are the questions you need to be asking yourselves.

You need the details that help a vet or nurse picture working with your team and decide whether you—your team—could be Their Kind of People.

In your story, what was the vet or the nurse worried about? How did their colleague respond? What changed for the vet or the nurse who asked for help?

Ask the vet or nurse who experienced it. If they remember the meaning of the conversation rather than the exact words, tell it that way.

Ask follow-up questions to get the details, and use what the vet or the nurse tells you in their own words.

There’s also a difference between telling someone how they’ll feel and giving them a story they can respond to.

“You’ll feel supported and confident here” is a statement. But how do you know that? Will they? You can’t decide that for them.

They might feel relief. They might recognise the sort of working relationship they’ve been missing. Or they might want to know how much guidance they’d receive while learning a new procedure.

Specificity alone won’t make every story appeal to every person, and that’s exactly what you want. Different people want different working environments.

Recognising Their Kind of Clinic could prompt a vet or a nurse to pick up the phone or send an email.

Where should I share employee stories to help recruit vets and nurses?

So where do all these stories go?

Now, I’m not saying that every single job ad has to include examples of every single scenario. That’s not the purpose of a job ad. Its job is simply to signal that there’s a vacancy at your clinic.

So what do you do with all these examples so they serve a purpose and add value to your recruitment marketing?

Well, that’s where Culture Story Centres come into play.

Culture Story Centres are purpose-built hubs specifically for recruitment. Your regular clinic website is built to get more clients through your front door. Your Culture Story Centre gives vets and nurses somewhere to find out about working with you.

Social media posts get buried. Their shelf life is limited. But your Culture Story Centre gives those stories an enduring home, making different stories easy to find and different Decision Gap questions easier to answer.

And those are the questions that a nurse has between seeing your job ad and deciding whether to apply to it.

It helps someone decide, “Does this sound like My Kind of Clinic, with My Kind of People?”

And it’s designed to start the “I’m interested in working for you” conversation.

If the timing’s not right for either side when that chat kicks off, it also gives the clinic a way to Keep in Touch.

What should I ask my team when collecting stories about working at our clinic?

I promised you a takeaway. Here it is.

Firstly, Spot it.

Find a team member’s account that’s still broad. Perhaps they’ve told you, “Someone always helps when I’m stuck.”

Then Source it.

Ask them to take you back to one occasion.

Where were they? What were they trying to do? What made them ask? How did the other person respond? What happened afterwards?

And then ask which part stayed with them and why. Why do they remember that specific incident? Specificity, remember?

Keep their phrasing. Get their permission to share. Ask how often this happens and what changes when the clinic gets busy, if anything does at all.

Keep those limits, if there is a change, in the story, because that’s what makes it real and that’s what makes it specific.

And then you want to Share it.

Build the Culture Story around the details that help a vet or a nurse imagine being in their colleague’s position.

Then wrap it all up and put it in your Culture Story Centre, with a way to ask about working with you.

Share it through your clinic’s LinkedIn company page as well, linking it back to the Centre.

And then, when you’ve done that, read it once more from a vet or a nurse’s point of view.

Have you given them enough to picture the interaction and consider how it might feel?

That is Specificity through the STORY lens.

Next episode: T for Truth

Next week in STORY, we’re looking at T for Truth.

Once someone starts imagining themselves in your story, does it feel honest enough to trust? We’ll talk about how a story can lose that honesty when it’s tidied up for recruitment.

And if you’d like help telling your team’s Culture Stories in a way that turns vanilla into something meaningful, then let’s have a chat—even if you might not be trying to fill a vacancy at your clinic right now.

Because Culture Storytelling needs to be an organic, always-happening thing, not just something when you want something from someone, like happens when you advertise a job vacancy.

You can get in touch with me: julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self because you work in Your Kind of Clinic with Your Kind of People.

Until next week. Bye.