Job Adverting Month 5 - The Expensive Surrender

The Expensive Surrender - episode 262

Julie South [00:00:06]:

Welcome to Veterinary Voices, culture storytelling conversations for forward-thinking vet clinics. I'm Julie South, and this is episode 262.

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

Over the last four weeks, we've been walking through what I call the five-month recruitment cycle — the one that, sadly, lots of veterinary clinics are trapped in without realising it's actually a cycle at all.

Month 1 is when you post on your platform of choice. And then you discover later that it didn't work, that you're still advertising, and month 2 needs to kick in.

In that time, you perhaps tweaked the ad. You maybe cast your net a little wider with another job board or two. And it still doesn't work.

Julie South [00:01:16]:

Month 3, you spend more. Maybe you opt for premium placement. Maybe you boost ads. And the money disappeared into very expensive noise.

Month 4 is when you tried some random things — maybe social media, website updates, maybe you asked your team to share. And none of that worked either.

And here we are. Month 5.

And month 5 is when things shift — and not for the better.

Julie South [00:01:55]:

When it comes to month 5, you're still here. You've still been advertising for somewhere close to four to six months. Some clinics I'm aware of have been at it for far longer than this — not months but years. You can imagine how exhausted they are.

And something happens when a vacancy ages. It doesn't just stay the same problem. Compounding things happen.

Your team has been covering. They've been absorbing the extra work, the extra consults, the extra everything. And for a while they did it without complaint because they understood it was temporary.

But temporary really does have a shelf life.

When temporary starts to feel permanent, the mood shifts.

Julie South [00:02:43]:

And you may have noticed this — some people go quiet. Some people stop asking how the recruitment's going because they already know, and they're tired of hearing that nothing has changed.

Others do the opposite. They start making sure that management is feeling the weight of it as well — not out of spite, but because they're exhausted. They're just so over it.

And really, who can blame them?

This is when the real risk arrives. It's not the vacancy itself, but it's what the vacancy is doing to the people who are still on your team.

And that's because good people start making decisions that you're unaware of.

They don't announce it. They don't complain loudly. But they do start updating their profiles.

Julie South [00:03:44]:

They take a call — maybe from a recruitment agency — that they may have ignored three months ago. They have a conversation, a chat with a colleague at another clinic that starts as catching up and then ends as something else.

They're not being disloyal. They're just exhausted.

And exhausted professionals with options — and veterinary professionals right now today do have options — they start quietly weighing them.

Month 5 is when the standards conversation happens. Sometimes it's said out loud. Sometimes it's just understood.

And the thinking goes something like: we can't keep going on like this. We need someone. Anyone suitable. Anyone who's qualified. Someone we can work with. Someone is better than no one.

That's warm body thinking, and it's understandable. I want to be clear about that. It's absolutely understandable when your team is running on empty.

Julie South [00:04:49]:

The pressure to just fill the role starts to feel like the responsible thing to do — to get someone in, to give the team breathing space.

But warm body thinking doesn't account for one thing: the wrong hire on an exhausted team doesn't give you breathing space. It gives you the illusion of breathing space, and a new problem on top of everything else.

Maybe you've engaged an agency by now. The circling of them calling you, emailing you, the LinkedIn messages, the "we have candidates actively looking" emails — it finally got to you and you paid, or you're considering paying, the $15,000 to $20,000.

Maybe they delivered someone.

But here's what happens when your brief is shaped by desperation.

Julie South [00:05:51]:

You're not describing your ideal team member anymore. You're describing someone you can live with.

The agency delivers exactly that, and the vacancy is filled. The pressure releases and everyone exhales.

And then the cracks start to appear.

Because an ill-fitting hire — a wrong hire in a team that's already been stretched, carrying resentment they may not be expressing openly — doesn't land quietly.

It creates friction.

And friction on a worn-out team accelerates the very thing you were trying to prevent.

Julie South [00:06:43]:

The people who stuck it out, the ones who gave you the benefit of the doubt for five months — they notice. They make assessments. Some of them decide that they're done.

And it's not because they don't like your clinic. Not because they're moving away to another area. But because they're exhausted.

Because working short-staffed for months has burnt them out. Because they need to protect their own well-being.

So now you end up with two vacancies.

The five-month one starts all over again — except this time your team is already exhausted before it even begins.

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

Julie South [00:07:37]:

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 professional shortage. The real problem could be the gap between when a vet or nurse reads your ad and then decides whether to apply or not.

We call that the job application decision gap.

And to help clinics see whether that might be happening, we've designed a super quick eight-question exercise called the Cultural Visibility Stress Test. It's absolutely free to do, takes about three minutes, and you can find it at careers.vetclinicjobs.com.

Now let's get back to the show.

That's the compounding nature of the five-month cycle. It doesn't end when you fill the role. It just resets — except you're more depleted than you were at the start.

Julie South [00:08:45]:

There's less goodwill in the tank. Less resilience in your team's tank. And in a few months, maybe a quarter or so, you'll find yourself back at month 1 again — posting on your platform of choice, hoping it works this time around.

I've spent years diagnosing this cycle, and the past five weeks walking you through it episode by episode, because if you don't recognise the pattern, you can't see the alternative that's available to you very clearly.

And the alternative — it's not a better job ad. It's not a different platform or agency or premium feature.

It's about building recognition before you need to advertise.

Culture Story Centre infrastructure.

Julie South [00:09:52]:

It's the permanent dedicated space where your team's real stories live. It's not social media where content disappears within hours or maybe days. Not your website careers page, because that's buried three clicks deep, and it's really — your website is built for pet owners, and it needs to be. Don't change that.

And it's not a job board profile you can rent, and that's it.

Instead, it's something built specifically for the vets and nurses who are your type of people to discover you, to watch you, stalk you even, and decide that you are their kind of people before there's a vacancy that you need to fill.

Clinics that have this infrastructure before they need it don't reach month 5 in their job adverts. They're not still advertising at month 5.

Julie South [00:11:01]:

Depending on how long they've been building recognition and how well developed that infrastructure is, they're filling roles in month 1, sometimes month 2.

They post a standard listing. They don't spend money on premium features. And they hear from people who already recognise them, who've been waiting for that clinic to post a job ad. An opening.

And these clinics are simply announcing a vacancy to people — to vets and nurses who already feel like they're their kind of place, their kind of clinic, their kind of people.

And when the role's filled, those clinics stop advertising. They disappear from the job boards because the job ad has done what it needed to do.

And month 5 never arrives.

I have two questions for you before I go.

Which would you rather be known as? The clinic that's been advertising for five months, or the clinic that filled its role in three weeks — or maybe five weeks — because vets and nurses already wanted to work at that clinic, at your clinic?

And here's the other one: if you were going to start building that recognition now, what would your very first step be?

If you're not sure, I'd love to have a chat. Email me direct: julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Julie South [00:12:19]:

Next week we're going to be starting a whole new series.

When clinics begin to see the five-month cycle clearly, that's when familiar phrases start to arrive. "We don't have time for this." "We can't afford it right now." "We need someone now, not in six months."

And each one is a place where clinics get stuck because they're still thinking inside the old way of doing things.

So we'll start unpacking those next week. I look forward to you being there with me, and thank you for getting to the end of this series and this episode.

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 at your place.