Your Job Ad Says Supportive Team — Why Should Someone Believe It?

Veterinary Voices — Episode 294

Hello and welcome. I’m 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 place.

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 number 294, and it’s the 11th in the 16-part 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.

Please stay to the end for this week’s how-to takeaway: how to Spot it, Source it and Share it as a Culture Story from your own clinic.

How can our vet clinic make its “supportive team” job ad more believable?

Your clinic makes a promise, but who believes it?

Here’s a question for you: if your clinic advertises excellent support for new grads, what would one of those vets or nurses looking for their first job find somewhere, anywhere out there in the online world to back up that excellent-support claim?

It’s easy to write:

“We offer a supportive environment with experienced vets available for mentoring.”

Or, if you’re a nurse:

“We offer a supportive environment with the head nurse available for mentoring.”

It’s easy to put something like that in a job ad. And I’m sure that’s true for plenty of clinics. They do have a supportive environment.

But picture a new grad comparing two or three jobs. The caseload looks interesting. The location works for them. And then they read that you’ll support them.

Okay, but what does that mean?

Will someone be available when they need help with a case?

What happens when the clinic gets busy?

Can they ask what feels like a silly question without being made to feel silly?

Or what happens when the person supporting them, their mentor, leaves? For whatever reason, they leave. What happens then?

That’s where evidence comes in, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

Last week, in episode 293 — Reality, we explored helping vets and nurses picture their working day at your clinic. Ordinary details, like a vet or nurse sometimes going home for lunch.

If you haven’t listened to that, there’s a link in the show notes for you.

When it comes to REAL•CULTURE•STORY, we’re still in the CULTURE part of this framework. That’s what helps vets and nurses understand how your clinic works.

REAL is all about what’s seen. CULTURE is what’s understood. And STORY is what’s felt.

So Evidence asks:

Can I trust the picture I’m forming?

In episode 290 — Lived Values, we talked about a new grad asking for help and getting a sigh, an eye roll — which I can’t do by audio — and a put-down. Again, there’s a link in the show notes.

What happened next helped us understand which standards that clinic protected.

This time, what experience gives a vet or nurse good reason to believe that asking for help at your clinic is okay and it’s welcome?

What team experiences could show how we support new graduates?

Imagine your clinic has three Culture Stories about support.

A new grad describes what happened when they asked for help

The first comes from a new grad who wasn’t sure about the next step in a consultation.

An experienced colleague came into the consult room, helped that vet or nurse work through the options, and explained the reasoning behind the decisions taking place.

What stayed with them wasn’t just getting through the consultation.

It was knowing they could ask for help again, even on a busy day. Even when they weren’t sure their question was worth asking. Even when, even though, even if they felt stupid asking that question.

And that’s a big thing when you’re new.

It’s also a big thing when you’re new to that team, rather than new as in a new grad. So “new” has two sides to it as well.

An experienced vet explains how support works when they’re busy

The second example comes from an experienced vet.

He or she describes stepping into consultations when younger colleagues need them, and then sitting down afterwards to talk through a case. They want them to understand the decision.

The experienced vet also explains what happens when they’re tied up.

They tell the new grad who else they can go to, so support doesn’t depend entirely on one person being free and available.

A nurse explains how the wider team helps

Then there’s another scenario.

A nurse recalls a busy morning, for example, when a new grad was falling behind. She helped organise the next patient, checked whether another pair of hands would help, and knew when to bring in an experienced vet.

From her perspective, supporting a new grad is something the team — the whole team — contributes to in different ways.

Those are three different people and three different experiences.

Those stories are considerably more useful than three people saying:

“We’re a really supportive team.”

That’s a bit vanilla.

Different people describing specific occasions, specific examples when support was provided, is far more convincing, far more real and far more genuine. Especially if those experiences reflect what regularly and usually happens across the clinic.

How can we check that our team stories give jobseekers a fair picture?

Evidence needs to stand up to scrutiny.

The veterinary profession is about having critical decision-making skills, and scrutiny is part of that.

Three positive stories don’t necessarily prove that support is consistent.

Perhaps the new grad had a wonderful experience one day, but then struggled to get help the following week. Perhaps one vet is brilliant at mentoring while another has very little patience.

That’s why evidence is about whether your clinic’s claims match how people work there.

If you say vets and nurses are encouraged to use their skills, show nurses using them.

If you describe your clinic as collaborative, show people working together when things get difficult — when things turn to custard.

And if experiences vary across the team, that’s useful information as well.

Vets and nurses looking for their next job need to be able to see a fair picture.

How can team stories start conversations with vets and nurses before they apply?

These stories also give a vet or nurse a starting point for pre-application chats.

Your team’s experiences help those vets and nurses considering your job ad understand what questions they can ask. Your answers help them decide whether to apply or keep scrolling.

“Okay, Julie, so where do all these stories go?” you might be thinking.

And that’s a great question.

I’m not saying every single job ad has to include examples of every single scenario I’ve been talking about in this series. That’s not the purpose of a job ad.

A job ad’s purpose is simply to signal that there’s a vacancy.

So what do you do with these examples so they serve a meaningful purpose and add value to your recruitment marketing?

Where should our vet clinic share its team stories so jobseekers can find them?

That’s where Culture Story Centres come into play.

Culture Story Centres are purpose-built hubs specifically for recruitment.

Your regular clinic website is built to get more clients through your front door. That’s its purpose.

Your Culture Story Centre gives vets and nurses somewhere to find out about working with you — what your clinic is like.

Giving team stories an enduring home beyond social media

Social media posts get buried.

Have you ever tried to find an old Facebook post? You know it’s there, but then you go to find it and it’s like, whoa.

Their shelf life is limited. Social media posts’ shelf life is limited. They’re designed to be that way.

But your Culture Story Centre gives the stories we’re talking about here an enduring home, a lifelong home, making different stories easy to find and different Decision Gap questions easier to answer.

Helping vets and nurses decide whether to apply or keep in touch

A Decision Gap is the gap between when somebody has a question from seeing your job ad and then deciding whether to apply for it.

It helps a vet or nurse decide:

Does this sound like My Kind of Clinic, with My Kind of People?

And it’s designed to start the “I’m interested in working for you” chat.

If the timing’s not right for either side when that chat kicks off, it also gives the clinic a way to keep in touch.

That’s why you need a Culture Story Centre.

How can we turn our team’s experiences into stories for recruitment?

Spot it. Source it. Share it.

How do you find the evidence in your own clinic that we’re talking about here?

Spot it: choose one promise from your job ad

Firstly, you need to spot it.

Choose one claim in your job ads or recruitment marketing material. It might be:

“We support our new grads.”

Then ask:

“What could we show a vet or nurse that would help them believe this?”

Source it: ask someone to describe when they experienced it

Talk to people in your clinic with that first-hand experience.

Ask them to take you back to a particular occasion when that was true.

What happened?

Who was involved?

What did they do?

And what happened next?

Then ask:

“Is that how things usually work here?”

That helps you tell the difference between a lovely one-off and something that’s part of your clinic’s everyday culture.

Share it: use their words, get permission and make the story easy to find

Turn those accounts into individual Culture Stories, preserving each person’s voice and getting their permission to share.

Put them in your Culture Story Centre so vets and nurses can click through from your job ad. Share them on your clinic’s LinkedIn company page as well.

You don’t need three stories ready to launch on day one.

Start with a genuine experience, then keep collecting other stories.

Over time, you’re building evidence that vets and nurses can explore whether or not you’re advertising a vacancy.

How can specific team stories give someone a reason to believe our job ad?

A claim tells vets and nurses what you want them to believe.

Evidence is what gives them the reason to believe it.

One story can show an experience. Several individual accounts describing consistent behaviour can help a vet or nurse trust the picture they’re forming and then decide whether to take the next step.

Next episode: Specificity

Next week, we’re moving into STORY, the final part of the REAL•CULTURE•STORY framework.

We’ve looked at what vets and nurses can see through REAL and understand through CULTURE.

Now we’re going to start exploring what they can feel and whether they want to work at your clinic.

We’ll start specifically with Specificity.

If you’d like help telling your team’s Culture Stories in a way that turns vanilla into something meaningful, then please, let’s have a chat.

Even if, even when, even though you’re not trying to fill a vacancy at your clinic right now.

Because culture storytelling needs to be an always-happening, organic thing, rather than something you turn on when you’re starting to advertise a job vacancy.

Please get in touch: julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

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.