8 Ideas to Attract Top Vet Talent to Your Practice

Although the number of UK veterinary graduates has increased over the last 10 years, a third of veterinary practices receive fewer than four applications, and in a quarter of small animal practices it takes 6 months to fill a position. Bringing in new top veterinary talent is an opportunity to grow your practice and shift in a more strategic direction. So, what quick-win solutions can you do to attract motivated and compassionate veterinary talent to your practice?

1. Create a brand identity

It is important to establish an effective brand identity, which will help set your practice apart from the competition and help build its reputation among potential employees and clients. Your brand is the image you wish to portray to the world and is one of the practice’s most valuable assets. Create a brand identity that will resonate with veterinary graduates and convey the personality and value of working at your practice.

2. Write a great job description

A job description is undeniably important when recruiting new talent to join your practice team. Job descriptions within the veterinary industry tend to have a precise and clinical tone. Why not try to use a ‘softer’ approach, this might attract your reader more, you could include the following:

• A brief overview

• Responsibilities within the role

• Circumstances i.e. location and hours

• Desired candidate traits

• Something unexpected such as staff testimonials

Make sure the description is succinct and list the most fundamental information near the top of the description, you don’t want people to stop reading before they get to the important stuff!

3. Creatively advertise jobs

Do more than just post a standard advert on a jobs board. Come up with a short, snappy title and include the type of work, location, salary range and out-of-hours rota. Convey a sense of urgency from the advert and give candidates several simple ways to apply. Showcase your practice culture and identity by thinking about the style, humour and tone. And be sure to enable the option of sharing on social media wherever you post the position. Also make sure it post it in more than one place! For people to know the job is available they must see it first.

4. Join the Vetsure Graduate Friendly Practice Scheme

Our scheme was developed with the help of industry expert, Dr Dave. It helps practices to recruit graduates and for them to become profitable members of the team within 6 months. The scheme could help you in the following ways:

• Promote yourself to talented graduates

• Compete with practices offering similar schemes

• Deliver a tried-and-tested development program

5. Partner-up with universities

Partnering with universities provides numerous opportunities for academic exchanges, collaborative programmes, further advertising and job vacancy promotion via email and social media channels.

6. Conduct exit interviews

Valuable information can be gained from conducting exit interviews, which will prove useful in all aspects of your practice’s work environment. You will find out about work culture, day-to-day concerns, processes, workplace ethics and employee morale. You can learn from this information you gain and change elements of your practice accordingly  to help how things are run and to attract new employees.

7. Employee benefits

Salary is likely to be the most influential factor of a job followed by veterinary CPD allowance, but it’s also important to make potential candidates aware of the other benefits of working at your practice. For example:

• Do you work out-of-hours? And if you do, do you have a reasonable rota?

• How much annual leave is given?

• Are bank holidays expected to be worked? And if so are they agreed fairly?

• What type of contract is the role (permanent, part-time, etc.)?

• Do you provide a company car if travel is involved?

• Do you provide a company mobile phone?

• Do you offer health insurance?

• Are there any other benefits you feel would be good to tell the potential candidate?

8. Update your online presence

Although you may not realise it, one of the first things many potential candidates will do when evaluating your job opening is navigate to your practice’s website. If your website is unattractive, difficult to use or old fashioned, top veterinary candidates may lose interest. The website should portray your brands identity and play a part in enticing new talent to the practice.