Veterinary Voices — Episode 274

You Have a Great Culture. So Why Is It So Hard to Hire?

Julie South [00:00:05]: You have a great clinic culture. Your team would back that up. So why is it so hard to find vets and nurses who want to work at your place?

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

I'm Julie South and this is Episode 274.

Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs — helping clinics get applications from Their Kind of People.

Stay to the end — because today I'm going to leave you with a question that will change how you think about when your recruitment really does start.

Since the pandemic, vet clinics have been asking their job ads to do more and more work to attract applications from suitably qualified, good culture-fit vets and nurses. This is the fifth episode in the series looking at the load being put on job ads — and why job ads aren't designed to carry such a load.

Julie South [00:01:16]: Today's topic is ongoing visibility.

Before I go any further — I can already hear some of you thinking: but we ARE visible. We're on Google. We have a Facebook page. Our website is up to date. People can find us.

And yes, you're right. They can find you when they're looking for you specifically.

The visibility that matters in recruitment is about being found by vets and nurses who don't know your name yet. Who aren't already searching for you. Who are asking questions like — what's it like to work at a mixed practice in regional New Zealand? Or what's it like to work in a small animal clinic in Queensland — or wherever you are. Do clinics here support their new graduates? What do vets and nurses say about after-hours culture in this area?

Those searches are happening every single day. On Google, on AI platforms — with the AIs and by the AIs — in Facebook groups and private conversations between colleagues.

Is your clinic showing up in any of those? Most aren't. And it's because they haven't given those searches anything to find.

I searched recently — "vet clinics with a great staff culture in [location]." What came back was almost entirely written for pet owners. For clinic clients. Care and compassion. Opening hours. Client reviews. The AIs did their best with what was there — which wasn't much written from a staff perspective at all.

Your clinic might have the best culture in your area. But if there's nothing out there from a staff perspective, a vet or nurse searching for it won't know about it.

Julie South [00:03:46]: Here's how most clinics approach recruitment.

A vet or a nurse hands in their notice. Or the workload gets to a point where another pair of hands is needed. A decision is made — you need to hire. Someone writes a job ad. Or they dust off the last ad they used. It goes up on Seek, or Kookaburra, or wherever the clinic usually advertises. It runs for a few weeks.

Applications start coming in — or they don't. The ad comes down when the job is filled, or when the clinic decides to give recruitment a bit of a break.

And then the clinic goes quiet. Dark. Again. Until the next time.

That cycle — off/on/off, start/stop/start, invisible/visible/invisible — is so normal in veterinary recruitment that most clinic managers don't even question it. It's just how hiring works.

Julie South [00:04:28]: Except it's not working. Not like it used to. Not anymore.

The pandemic changed a whole bunch of things. And how recruitment works is one of those things. It feels to me like recruitment's axis got tilted — bent a bit out of shape on lots of fronts.

Here's what that cycle looks like from a vet or nurse's perspective.

They're not job hunting right now. Most aren't. They're employed, reasonably content, not actively looking. But like most people in any profession, they're passively aware. They notice things. They hear things from colleagues. They occasionally search for things in their professional and online world.

Julie South [00:05:07]: And during all those months — or years — when your clinic is dark, when there's no job ad running, when there's nothing to find — you don't exist to them. You're in the off mode. The stop mode. The not-advertising mode.

So when you do put up a job ad, it means you're starting from zero. Again.

Changing jobs is huge. It's a significant ask — by you of them. And a job ad isn't equipped to carry that load. Not alone.

Julie South [00:05:57]: The vets and nurses most likely to be your kind of people aren't sitting on Seek right now, refreshing the page waiting for your ad. They're living their lives. Working their shifts. Keeping an eye out — the way most people think about career changes. Slowly. Incrementally. Over months.

The clinic that reaches these "keeping their eye out" vets and nurses isn't the one that posts the best ad at the perfect moment. It's the one that's already part of their professional world — already familiar, already trusted — long before any ad runs.

That's the ongoing visibility I'm talking about.

A job ad can only ever be a moment in time. Visibility is a habit.

Julie South [00:06:50]: Super quick interruption.

If you're wondering what a vet or nurse finds when they search for your clinic right now — how about booking a one-hour consult with me? We'll look at it together and you'll be able to see what's showing up through fresh eyes.

Email me — julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Now back to the show.

There's a difference between being visible and being believed.

A clinic can post on Facebook every week and still be invisible to a vet or nurse trying to make a real decision — because it's all coming from the clinic itself. Self-promotion, however well-intentioned, gets discounted. People know the source and they adjust accordingly.

Third-party voice is different.

When someone independent — a team member on a podcast, a verified anonymous reviewer, a colleague recommending your clinic in a Facebook group — says something about your clinic, it carries a weight that no amount of your own content ever will.

Julie South [00:08:13]: It's credible because it didn't come from you. It's trustworthy because there was no obvious reason to say it other than that it's true.

That's not just visibility. That's credibility. And credibility is what turns a passive "keeping their eye out" vet or nurse into someone who applies.

This episodic on/off, start/stop, visible/invisible recruitment has a cost — and it's one most clinics never calculate.

Think about the practice owner who hasn't had a full day off the floor in three months. Still consulting. Still covering emergencies. Still doing the job they hired someone else to do — because that someone handed in their notice, the replacement hasn't started yet, and the gap in between is being filled by whoever's left.

Julie South [00:09:16]: That gap has a price. Paid in exhaustion. In locum fees. In cases that wait longer than they should. In a team stretched way past the point where anyone's doing their best work.

And it becomes the backward step of starting from zero every time a vacancy opens.

The clinic that's been consistently visible — that has given vets and nurses something real to find, something real to identify with, long before any vacancy exists — that clinic doesn't start from zero. They're starting from somewhere forward. And that somewhere is a very significant advantage.

Here's the question I said I'd leave you with.

If a vet or nurse searched for your clinic right now — not your website, not your job ad, but genuine independent information about what it's like to work there — what would they find?

And if the honest answer is not much — or nothing at all — then your recruitment efforts are starting on the back foot. Later than you think. Further back than you think. Every. single. time.

Julie South [00:10:45]: If you'd like to talk about what building that ongoing visibility and credibility looks like — email me. julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Next week — Episode 275 — the final in this series. We're going to bring it all together.

This is Julie South signing off, 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. You start welcoming people who already feel like they belong. Because you are their kind of clinic.

Until next week.