Could Your Clinic’s Everyday Reality Be Why Someone Applies? — ep 293

How your clinic’s everyday working life can give vets and nurses a reason to find out more about your vacancy.

Helping vets and nurses picture working at your clinic

00:07

Could your clinic’s everyday reality be why someone applies for your jobs?

Hello and welcome. I am 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.

This is episode 293, the tenth in the series about the REAL•CULTURE•STORY framework. That’s the framework we use when we’re working with clinics to create, tell and share their culture stories.

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

Last week, in episode 292, we looked at Uniqueness.

R for Reality: the ordinary good bits of working life

01:15

What your team takes for granted could be why someone applies. You’ll find that episode at veterinaryvoices.com/292.

This week, we’re looking at R for Reality within CULTURE. We’re talking about what’s understood, helping a vet or nurse answer: “Can I imagine my working day looking like this?”

“Like this” is whatever claim is being made.

When you hear the word “reality”, do you immediately think of the hard bits? Our brains automatically have a negative bias. Do you think of the interruptions, the pressure, the days when everything suddenly starts turning to custard?

Those are all part of working life.

How can I make my veterinary job advert more appealing?

02:16

And so are the ordinary good bits. If you leave those out of your culture stories, someone reading your job ad may never discover a part of working at your clinic that they’d really enjoy.

A vet or nurse needs to be able to imagine their working day at your clinic before they can decide whether you’re Their Kind of Clinic.

Culture stories can show the ordinary quality-of-life details your established team may barely notice anymore because they’re routine.

Think about what “great lifestyle location” might tell someone in a job ad. They might imagine the lovely weekends, but what changes during the days they’re working? What could they look forward to between arriving at work and getting home?

Here is a real example: lunch beside the sea.

There’s a clinic where some of the vets or nurses sometimes walk to the beach during their lunch break. It’s about ten minutes each way.

They sit on a park bench for about ten minutes, eat their lunch, and then walk back to work. About half an hour altogether.

One vet relocated from overseas. Where she’d lived before, getting to the beach meant hours of travel. It was just a dream. There was no way she could do it at lunchtime.

Now, eating lunch beside the sea is part of a working day for her. Just picture that.

Lunch beside the sea: a real working-day example

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You’ve brought your lunch to work. Instead of eating it inside, you can, when the weather’s fine, walk to the beach, sit down with it on a park bench, and then head back to work.

The sea that used to be hours away is close enough now, at this clinic, for a lunchtime visit.

For someone considering relocation, that story gives “close to the beach” a meaning they can use. They can begin to imagine a different working day from the one they have now. They might start to wonder: “Could eating lunch beside the sea be part of my working day?”

That question could be the reason they click through from your job ad to read more about your clinic. Or it could be a reason to get in touch to ask about the role and how lunch breaks work.

Notice the qualifiers here: some of the team, sometimes.

Showing what your clinic’s location means in practice

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That’s different from promising everyone a beach lunch every day. When you tell your own team’s stories, be just as clear about what someone can expect.

This is where Reality takes us further than the location itself.

Being near the beach gives you a feature to mention. Describing the people walking there with their lunch helps someone understand how that normal, everyday activity for you can become part of their working life.

The same question applies elsewhere. How does a ten-minute rush-hour commute in a town without traffic lights, or being close to a surf beach or a ski field, fit into someone’s regular working day?

A genuine nine-to-five day, or going home for lunch each day, can also give someone a concrete picture of the quality of life available in that job, in your clinic.

Giving jobseekers a reason to investigate your vacancy

05:59

You don’t need a beach to tell this kind of culture story. But you do need to find something that’s true about working at your clinic that helps someone imagine their day there.

Keep the working experience in the story.

A beautiful coastal photograph leaves a vet or nurse guessing whether they’d ever get near the water on a workday. But the lunch story from a real person, in a real clinic, on a real day gives them something specific to consider and ask about at your clinic.

Of course, a beach lunch won’t answer their questions about workload, support or working hours. Those still need answers. But it can give them a reason to investigate your vacancy further, especially if they’re hoping for a change of job that would improve their quality of life.

Your regular working day could contain something someone else would love to have in theirs. Can they find out what when they follow your job ad?

Spot it. Source it. Share it. Here’s this week’s how-to takeaway.

How do I find stories about my clinic’s culture?

07:15

Spot it. Look for ordinary parts of your working life at your clinic that someone new or relocating would notice.

Ask a recent arrival what they enjoy most about their working day that they didn’t get, couldn’t picture or couldn’t imagine from your job ad. You’re looking for a detail they can describe from experience.

Source it. Ask the people involved to talk you through a particular occasion.

Who went? How long did it take? How often do they do it? What makes it possible? What happens on days when work gets in the way?

Those are questions to ask. They’re not gaps to fill with a convenient answer.

Sharing your team’s stories through your job ad

08:05

If someone says “sometimes”, keep “sometimes”. Use their words.

Share it. Tell the occasion with enough detail for an outside vet or nurse to imagine being there.

In the beach example I used here, it was the walk, the beach, the lunch and the return to work that made the experience easy for someone to picture.

Then put that story somewhere a vet or nurse can click through from your job ad. Give them a straightforward way to ask about working at your clinic.

That’s how a story about an ordinary part of the day can help someone take the next step towards a job application.

Next episode: E for Evidence

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Next week, in episode 294, we’re looking at E for Evidence.

Once someone can picture working at your clinic, what helps them trust that picture? We’ll look at how consistent stories, images and patterns give them reasons to believe what they’re seeing.

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 when you’re not trying to fill a vacancy at your clinic right now.

Culture storytelling is an always-happening, organic thing. It’s not just something you turn on when you’re advertising a job vacancy.

Get in touch, please: julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Julie’s closing sign-off

09:43

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.