3 Tips For Making Expert Hires in the Veterinary Field
If you had a chance to catch our event, "The Unbreakable Profession," you would surely notice many attendees commenting on hiring, training, and retention during the segments. Some veterinary professionals were lamenting that they have trouble even getting employees to show up for work. Hiring, in particular, can be highly challenging and expensive. You can lose money because if you don’t do it right the first time, you’re continually dealing with the cost of turnover.
Our inaugural webinar season showed us that the hiring process in the veterinary field could use an overhaul to provide candidates that last and who also work hard, fit in with the company culture, and wear many hats. That last attribute is a must, as the one constant about the veterinary profession is that it’s constantly changing. If the pandemic has taught us one thing, we must evolve or be left behind. That’s why we’ve taken the time to compile some thoughts from some of the foremost authorities in the field on hiring, and we’ve shared these ideas below.
1. Hire For Personality; Train For the Job
Of course, veterinarians must undergo extensive training to practice in the field. Still, when it comes to the various other positions in a veterinary office, such as those who answer the phones, many will tell you that it’s best to hire for personality and attitude and train for skills.
As our very first guest on our webinar series, former Executive Director of the Southern California VMA, Dr. Peter Weinstein, noted:
“If you have potential employees who enjoy people first and pets second, they can fit in any role that doesn’t require a license or certification—if somebody takes time to train them. Hire for personality, train to a level of trust and experience. Some of the best employees that I had never worked in the veterinary field. So it doesn’t require experience; it requires a fit within the culture of the practice. Working with others, trusting others, believing others, and giving the new hires the skills to become successful is all you need.”
Hiring and training guru Wendy Myers echoed this sentiment during her webinar:
“This is particularly important because, in veterinary medicine, that front desk position has a 26% turnover rate. We’ve got to do a much better job of not only hiring people but then honestly keeping people, and you do that through setting expectations from the beginning and giving them the tools to be successful in the job.”
You could have made the best hire of your life, but you’re setting this person up to fail without the proper training. And it’s incredible to look at the difference in time that various industries spend training their employees versus the “baptism by fire” method in the veterinary industry. And if anyone gets it, we do. Veterinary professionals are overworked and often understaffed. But trust us when we tell you that taking that initial time to train your employees will pay off in the long run.
This was another poignant quote from Dr. Weinstein on this very topic:
“We shoot ourselves in the foot or higher by not taking the time to do a correct onboarding orientation and training...we don’t give them the tools to become successful. In the case of Ritz-Carlton, it’s six months from the time of hire to the time they actually connect with a client. With veterinary medicine, it’s six minutes from the time they’re hired to the time they connect with the client.”
DVM and founder of The Drake Center For Veterinary Care, Dr. Michele Drake, discussed the need to train quickly during our Defeating the Phone Frenzy Webinar. Although she also firmly believes in thorough training for long-term results, she offered the following advice to avoid putting current employees out while teaching new employees:
“We have a training manual for our receptionists and checklists of when you were trained on this. But training is very intensive for the people who are already working and are super busy. So, what I try to work with my staff on is I always say, ‘Teach them the top 10 things that are going to be helpful for you guys right away. Get those top 10 things covered.’”
Are you ready to hire a veterinarian or vet tech? Let us introduce you to a service that can help you find the right candidate, right now! Click Here.
2. Make Sure You Have an Established Practice Culture Before Hiring
Establishing company culture might not seem critical in the grand scheme of things, but it goes back to the nightmare of spending the time, money, and resources on hires that ultimately do not fit within your practice. Hiring becomes more effortless once you are confident you know who you are as a practice and what you stand for. As Dr. Drake has said, her hiring manager doesn’t even ask a lot of questions but, instead, primarily listens and uses what she hears to decide whether this person is a good fit:
“My manager is amazing at hiring people, and she knows us. Also, she's been with me from day one, so that's really a unique situation in that we've worked together for so long. I hear people always say about interviewing people, ‘What are good questions to ask?’ But my hiring manager is amazing at listening. She just kind of asks a couple of questions, and then she sits back and listens. Within a few minutes, they've told her enough about whether they're a good fit or not.”
And while you might not think now is the time to reevaluate your culture, Dr. Drake says this is an ideal opportunity to do so. A crisis shows you whether you’ve done your due diligence in hiring, so if you’ve found that your practice has struggled instead of banded together to come up with innovative solutions, it’s time to circle back and shift your hiring process.
When the pandemic first hit, our GeniusVets team held a Coming Back From Covid Webinar, and participant Dr. Scott Loepp talked about how the whole situation challenged them and allowed some to thrive while others understandably struggled:
“Give people the spotlight, and you realize some people are just wired this way. I’ve seen some employees grow in real-time. When the pressure is on, you see the performers.”
He went on to say that having employees who possess various strengths has allowed him to be better at his job, especially during challenging times:
“Freeing people to do what they’re best at really works. We have our boots on the ground, so, as a practice owner, I’m free to think about what’s coming next.”
Fellow participant Dr. Matt Demey also commented on the benefit of having an established culture when tragedy struck:
“My biggest priority has been to try and keep everyone employed. I’ve tried to take that worry away from the staff, and we are even hiring now. All of our job descriptions are changing daily. Thankfully, we had a good culture to begin with…”
Are you ready to hire a veterinarian or vet tech? Let us introduce you to a service that can help you find the right candidate, right now! Click Here.
3. You Have to Be Able to Make the Tough Decisions
Hiring is hard for those of us who are people pleasers, as you have to make tough decisions on who goes and who stays. Of course, this means you have to be able to look at the bigger picture and see who will fit best into your current work culture and, perhaps, pass over the person who you were easily able to joke around with during the interview. This is also true when employees are brought on board, as being nice isn’t always the most efficient way to run a practice.
As Dr. Drake mentioned during the Defeating the Phone Frenzy webinar:
“In their desire to be nice, veterinarians are not being nice to the rest of the staff when we have some passive-aggressive people who do not fit our mission or culture. Whenever I hear someone say, ‘Oh, I’m too nice to do that,’ I think, ‘No, you’re actually not being nice. By being nice to one person, you’re not being nice to the 10, 20, 30, or 40 other employees by allowing that person to stay in the practice.’ So sometimes you have to clean house.”
Dr. Drake pointed out that now is the time to make lemonade out of lemons when it comes to hiring, as there are so many people out of work. And these aren’t second-rate candidates either but, instead, are victims of circumstance, so now is the time to act:
“Here’s the thing, hiring right now is difficult, but there are a lot of people who are out of work and capable. So it may not be that you have technicians lining up with five years of awesome experience, per se, but there are a lot of very sharp and motivated individuals who want jobs.”
Hiring isn’t easy, but it pays dividends to spend the time and resources on doing so as skillfully as possible to avoid making even costlier mistakes. If you’re still unsure of the best way to bring on new hires, schedule a GeniusVets demo.
Better yet, take advantage of our veterinary job board and HR Toolkit. The job board and toolkit are free resources to those who have claimed their profiles. Once you've done so, you'll be able to upload job openings and make their descriptions ultra-engaging with colorful photos, videos, and a well-written description of your clinic or hospital. You can then easily share your postings on social media from your profile. The HR Toolkit is an amazingly comprehensive hiring guide and is full of tips from well-respected veterinary professionals.