Veterinary Voices — Episode 269

Stuck: That's Not How We Do Things Around Here

Julie South [00:00]:

Welcome to Veterinary Voices — culture storytelling conversations for forward-thinking vet clinics.

I'm Julie South, and this is Episode 269.

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.

This is the final episode in our Where Vet Clinics Get Stuck with Their Recruitment series.

If you haven't heard Episodes 263 through 268, they're all there waiting for you at veterinaryvoices.com. This series is worth listening to in order, because each one builds on the last.

This week's stuck is the last one in this series — and in some ways, it's the most important.

That's not how we do things around here.

Julie South [01:09]:

Before I go further — what I say in this series may rub you up the wrong way.

If you feel yourself getting defensive as you listen, I ask you, with a huge amount of respect, to hold that defensiveness in one hand and keep listening anyway.

The clinics I've seen make the biggest breakthroughs are almost always the ones who felt that defensiveness first.

And stay with me to the end, because I have a question.

That's not how we do things here.

Of all the places clinics get stuck, this is one of the most honest. It's not about budget, or time, or platform. It's about identity.

It's the clinic saying: we know who we are, we know how we operate, and this doesn't fit.

Julie South [02:03]:

And I respect that. Knowing who you are and how you operate is a strength. It's exactly the kind of clarity that makes for a great culture.

The problem is when that clarity becomes a wall rather than a foundation.

I want to tell you about two clinics.

The first told me very clearly they're in a tight-knit region. Everyone knows everyone. They don't share that kind of stuff on their Facebook page, and they certainly don't do LinkedIn.

That's not how things work here, Julie. That's not who we are.

Julie South [02:32]:

That clinic is still looking for the person they most need. They've been looking for years.

I'm not saying that to be unkind. I'm saying it because that's not how we do things here has a cost.

And that cost is measured in years of vacancy. Years of covering. Years of the same cycle repeating, over and over, without end.

The identity is intact. And the role is still open.

Julie South [03:19]:

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 professional shortage.

The real problem could be the gap between when a vet or nurse reads your ad and decides whether to apply. We call that the job application decision gap.

To help clinics see whether that might be what's happening, 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 [04:01]:

We were talking about two clinics.

The first said that's not how we do things here — and is still looking, years later.

The second clinic tells a different story.

This one came to us after about a year on the traditional recruitment route — job advertising, multiple platforms, rewrites, the full cycle. Almost identical starting point to the first clinic.

But this practice manager was different in one way.

Even through her scepticism, she was still willing to try something she didn't fully understand.

Julie South [04:37]:

The storytelling approach felt unfamiliar. She couldn't see how it would work.

But she followed the framework anyway — all of it.

We told her up front not to expect applications to come flooding in through the job board. That's not how this works. So she was prepared for that.

What she wasn't prepared for was what actually happened.

The clinic's stories started rippling through the team's networks. Word spread quietly, organically, almost invisibly — that the clinic was hiring.

Not because of the job ad. There was one, but that wasn't the pathway. It was through people, through connections expanding and interconnecting in ways that are hard to trace but are very, very real.

Julie South [05:13]:

What I call automagic networking — when all the different networking ripples expand outward and start interconnecting with each other.

She couldn't point to the exact mechanism, but she told me she knew it was something we'd set in motion, because it happened exactly the way we said it would.

She hired before we'd even finished the full programme.

Two clinics. Very similar starting points.

One said: this isn't how we do things here.

The other said: we haven't done that here. I don't understand how it'll work. I'm not sure it will — but we'll do it anyway, because nothing we've been doing so far has worked, and we need to do something different.

Two completely different outcomes.

Julie South [06:13]:

And here's what makes this stuck feel different from all the others in this series.

Budget, time, platform, careers pages, social media — those are all tactical stucks. You can work around them, prioritise, find a different path. Each one has a workaround, if you're willing to look for it.

But that's not how we do things here is something else entirely.

It's not a tactical problem. It's a thinking problem. And you can't fix a thinking problem with a tactic.

Julie South [07:20]:

Until the thinking shifts, no tactic will stick.

Of all the stucks in this series, this is the one that will keep some clinics the most stuck — because they'll keep reaching for tactical solutions to what is actually a thinking problem. And it won't work. It can't work.

One of those clinics I mentioned knew the problem. They could articulate it clearly — they needed to tell people what a great place they were to work.

But when it came to actually doing it — sharing real stories, letting the team speak, trying something unfamiliar — the rigidity kicked in.

That's not how we do things here.

Julie South [08:05]:

And the cost of that rigidity isn't just one unfilled vacancy. It's years of the same vacancy.

It's the team covering, exhausted, watching nothing change. It's the broadest signal that innovation — any innovation — meets the same wall.

When that's not how we do things here is the answer to every new idea, it stops being a preference and starts becoming a ceiling.

And ceilings are felt by everyone inside the building — including the people you most need to keep.

Julie South [08:41]:

One question before I go — and it applies not just to recruitment, but to pretty much everything else in your clinic too.

Is that's not how we do things here a decision or a habit?

Because decisions can be revisited. Habits just keep running.

If you'd like to have that conversation, email me at julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

That's the end of the Where Vet Clinics Get Stuck with Their Recruitment series. Thank you for listening — wherever you joined us from.

If any of these episodes has landed somewhere real for you, I'd love to hear about it.

Julie South [09:46]:

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 you're their kind of people, you stop hiring strangers, because you're welcoming people who already feel they belong. Because you're their kind of clinic.

Until next week.