the Recruitment Cycle That's Costing You Thousands - ep 242

Julie South [00:00:06]:
Has this ever happened to you? Someone hands in their notice, you advertise the role, months pass and eventually you fill the position. Turn off all the job advertising and you breathe a sigh of relief. And then wham o 18 months later, someone else resigns and you're back at the beginning spend starting the whole exhausting cycle from scratch. If this pattern sounds familiar, you're not alone. You're just stuck in a cycle that most vet clinics don't realize they can actually break. Welcome to Veterinary Voices. Employer brand conversations that help veterinary clinics hire great people. I'm Julie south and this is episode 242.

Julie South [00:00:53]:
Veterinary Voices is brought to you by Vet clinic jobs Build your employer brand do your recruitment better. Today we're starting a whole new series about something most vet clinics have probably never really thought about. How to stop the exhausting pattern of starting from zero every single time you need to recruit. Because just for the record, it absolutely doesn't have to be this way. Today we're going to be looking at the three stages of the recruitment cycle that keeps you stuck. Why it's so expensive and exhausting. And please stay to the end because you'll get an action plan for identifying exactly where you are in this cycle right now. Before we start looking at what's going wrong, let's start with what you actually want recruitment to look like.

Julie South [00:01:56]:
You'll probably agree that you want to be able to advertise a role and get quality applications within a reasonable timeframe. You want applicants who are absolutely genuinely excited about going to work on Monday mornings at your place because they understand what you stand for. Not from people who think that veterinary is great and they are totally unsuitable. You want to do this affordably and predictably, building your own capability to recruit well. In fact, you may not even have realized it's possible to be self sufficient at recruitment without remaining dependent on expensive external providers. That's what successful recruitment actually looks like. But most vet clinics aren't experiencing this. Instead, instead they're stuck in a cycle that makes recruitment feel difficult.

Julie South [00:02:51]:
It's expensive and it's exhausting every single time. Let me walk you through what actually happens when most vet clinics need to recruit. Let's see if this sounds familiar for you. Stage one someone resigns, you need to fill the position. So. So you do what seems logical in what you've done before. You write a job ad and you post it on a job board, probably your go to platform, the one you've used before or that you know other clinics use. You're optimistic at this point, you think, we'll find someone, we're a good clinic, someone will want to work here.

Julie South [00:03:32]:
You're spending a few hundred dollars monthly, maybe even the thick end of a thousand, depending on the platform for the job board. Whilst you wait, you're managing the entire recruitment process, your sifting through unsuitable applications. But that just seems normal. That's what recruitment is all about, right? A couple of months pass, maybe a few months, you're getting either no applications or still applications from people clearly who haven't read the ad, probably and or are totally unsuitable for your clinic. Then we get to stage two. The pressure starts mounting from leadership wanting the position filled, from your team, who are covering gaps and starting to burn out from declining patient care quality because everyone's stretched too thin. Say you panic and you spray your job ad across multiple platforms simultaneously. Now you're on three, maybe four, maybe even you've gone to a limited time life expectancy print ad in a journal, hoping that casting a wider net will somehow produce better results.

Julie South [00:04:42]:
You're spending well into the thousands monthly now, maybe multiple thousands. And you're still managing all the recruitment yourself without any support. Just more platforms to check, more logins to remember, more unsuitable applications to filter through, more subscriptions to pay for. And here's where this gets really tempting. About month two or three, recruitment agencies start selling, circling. They call with seductive promises. Something like, we've got candidates who might be perfect for you. Or they'll send you an email with a quick overview of someone they've got who'll be perfect for you.

Julie South [00:05:23]:
That spiel is incredibly tempting when you're desperate and nothing else seems to be working at this point. Some clinics will sign a terms of trade, leaving the agency door open whilst continuing to try recruiting themselves, hoping they'll find someone first and avoid the 15 to the $25,000 agency fee. Others resist entirely and keep battling alone. But here's what many clinics discover the hard way. Even when you engage agencies, they often don't or can't deliver. Sometimes those candidates were just a ruse to get their foot in the door. Sometimes they do send candidates, but because the agency doesn't truly understand your clinic culture or they don't even know much about your location, whether public transport is even a thing or not, the people they send aren't actually good fits. Then we get to stage three.

Julie South [00:06:24]:
More months have passed. Sometimes you're approaching a year or even longer in this recruitment cycle. Still no suitable applicants. Despite spending heavily and trying everything, your team is seriously burning out now. Quality is suffering in ways you can't ignore anymore. Eventually you compromise on hiring standards to fill the gap quickly. Or you accept an agency sourced applicant who isn't quite right culturally. Or you just keep going, continuing the cycle and into another year, hoping that something will eventually change.

Julie South [00:07:08]:
Let's say you do eventually fill the position through compromise, agency or sheer persistence. Everyone breathes a massive sigh of relief. Yay. The pressure is off. So you turn off all the job advertising, you cancel those expensive subscriptions, you stop doing checking platforms daily because spending money whilst you're not actively hiring seems totally illogical, right? Why would you keep paying for job boards when you're fully staffed? Life goes back to normal. The pressure is off Finally. Then 18 months later, maybe two years if you're lucky, someone else resigns and you're back at stage one, starting from zero, doing the entire exhausting cycle all over again. Same pattern, same desperation phases, same expensive outcomes.

Julie South [00:08:06]:
Because nothing has fundamentally changed about how you approach recruitment. This is what I call the start, stop, start cycle. And it's costing you far more than you probably realize. Let's talk about what this cycle actually costs you. Because it's far more than you probably realize because of the hidden costs, those invisible costs. The time costs. Months, sometimes a year, maybe longer. Managing recruitment yourself without results.

Julie South [00:08:44]:
And it's not even your main job, but somehow it lands on your desk because, well, it just does. Then we have the financial costs. You start with a few hundred dollars monthly on one platform, then you're into the thousands across multiple platforms and you're even seriously considering that $15,000 to $25,000 agency fee. What about the quality costs? You're either compromising on who you hire just to fill the gap, or you're accepting agency sourced candidates who don't quite fit your culture team costs. Your existing team is covering gaps for months, burning out, watching quality suffer, feeling compromised opportunity costs. How many quality veterinary professionals never even saw your job ad? Because you only advertise when desperate on platforms they weren't checking with content that didn't differentiate you from everyone else. And then there's a psychological trap that keeps you stuck. You've already spent thousands, you've already invested months.

Julie South [00:10:01]:
Stopping now feels like admitting all that time and money was wasted. So you keep going, hoping the next platform or the next rewrite will finally work. That's sunk cost bias in action and it's costing you even more. And then the cycle itself costs you, because you'll be doing this entire thing again in 12, 18, 24, months, whatever it is, it's not a one time cost, it's a recurring pattern. Look, if you're listening to this and you're in stage two or stage three right now, already spending hundreds, maybe thousands considering agencies, team burning out, you don't have to wait for this entire podcast series to play out. The solution isn't expensive, I promise. And it's absolutely something you can implement and even whilst you're currently recruiting. If you want to make changes now, rather than waiting, then email me directly julietclinicjobs.com and let's chat about breaking the cycle for your clinic.

Julie South [00:11:17]:
Specifically, here's the critical thing that most vet clinics don't understand. The cycle repeats because every time you need to recruit, you're starting from zero marketing awareness. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody has any reason to trust your claims about culture or support or professional development because those claims sound identical to every other clinic's claims. When you communicate about your clinic, when you're desperately hiring, and then you turn everything off, off when you're starved, you guarantee that your next recruitment cycle will be exactly the same as the last one. There's a better way, though. Over this series, this podcast series, we're going to explore exactly what that better way looks like and how to implement it. I promised you a takeaway.

Julie South [00:12:21]:
Here's what I'd like you to do this week. I'd like you to identify where you are in this cycle right now. If you're currently fully staffed, you're in the relief phase between cycles, and this is actually the perfect time to start thinking about breaking the pattern before the next person resigns. If you're currently recruiting and it's going well, hopefully you're in stage one, you're still optimistic, great. But ask yourself, do you have a plan for what happens after you fill this role or will you just turn everything off and start from zero next time? If you're currently recruiting and it's not going well, you're probably in stage two or three. You can feel the pressure mounting and you're considering more platforms or recruitment agencies. You're experiencing the expensive part of the cycle right now. Here's what I want you to do.

Julie South [00:13:16]:
Identify the position that you're recruiting for, identify where you think you are in the cycle and then ask, what could we do differently this time so we're not experiencing groundhog Day in 18 months? Starting from scratch again. Identifying where you are in the cycle is the first step because you can't change a pattern you haven't recognized and remember, the best time to break this cycle was last year. Regardless of whether you were fully staffed then or not. The second best time is right now, wherever you are in the pattern. Next week coming up, we're going to be talking about why your consumer facing website and social media can't do the work of recruitment, even though that's exactly what most clinics are relying on when they need to hire. Thank you for listening to Veterinary Voices brought to you by Vet Clinic Jobs. This is Julie south signing off and reminding you that recruitment doesn't have to be this exhausting cycle of starting from zero every single time. There is a better way and we're going to explore it together over this series.

Julie South [00:14:33]:
So I'm inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self this week because you now know how to recognize the the pattern, and recognizing it is the first step towards breaking it for good.