Why Do Some Veterinary Practices Have No Issues with Recruitment?
Many veterinary practices struggle with recruitment not due to poor reputation, but a lack of reputation, making it difficult to attract quality applicants. The key to successful recruitment lies in proactively building an employer brand by effectively communicating the practice's values and daily operations to potential employees.
(This blog was originally published on our previous website)
Two pretty much identical jobs: same area of the country, similar role responsibilities, similar remuneration, similar business size and structures. Yet, one ad receives four quality applicants and the other receives none. Why?
Both veterinary practices have clear plans for the future and are investing in their current teams and business to ensure provision of a quality service for clients. Both practices could be a great place to work. However, one of these practices has a reputation as a good employer, the other has none. We don’t mean a bad reputation, simply no reputation- people haven’t heard of them.
This was something I would encounter on a weekly basis when working in the defence recruitment sector and it is a very real problem within the veterinary profession. When we discuss marketing within the business, the tendency is to focus our efforts on the client and that is important. However, the scarce resource within the vet profession is not clients, it is employees.
The power now lies with the employee and that means, if they must choose between applying for a job with a practice which they have heard of and a practice which they have not come across, they are likely to apply for what seems the lower risk option. If you advertise a vacancy before candidates are aware of you, you are going to struggle to recruit.
Yet in a time poor, resource poor profession, can you afford to invest in building an employer reputation? How do you keep it efficient and effective?
This is where we will begin in Part 1 of our online, interactive course: Finding the Right Person for You. We will help delegates to answer questions such as:
- Why do we exist?
- Who are we targeting?
- Why would they want to work for us?
- How are we going to communicate with them?
Once we have established the base knowledge needed to build a positive reputation, we will learn to plan and run a successful recruitment campaign. Part 2 of the course will then complete the recruitment cycle, covering candidate assessment and making the right decision for your business.
Some veterinary practices don’t struggle to recruit. Why? Because they have learnt to communicate what they are practising day-to-day to those who they would like to hear it. Join us to do the same.
