✍️ How To Write The Perfect Veterinary Job Ad

Writing a job ad for your practice probably isn’t something you do often. And when you do, you’re competing against hundreds of other practices trying to connect with the same small pool of talented veterinarians, vet techs, and nurses. The difference between getting multiple great applications and getting none often comes down to how well you tell your Story.

Connect With Your Next Team Members

Most veterinary job ads read the same: busy practice, “we’re like family,” equipment list. What’s missing? The leadership, the team, the culture, why working with you will be a great experience. That’s the story candidates actually want to hear.

An effective job ad (or Job Campaign as we prefer to describe it) is a carefully crafted story aimed at connecting with and engaging the best candidates for your role.

We developed our ideal Job Campaign structure by testing and reviewing the results from thousands of job ads to identify what makes potential candidates click Apply Now and what doesn’t. We focused on what content to include as well as the flow, the order in which your job ad copy should be structured. Here’s our step-by-step guide to creating a Job Campaign that works…

First, let’s start with some Do’s and Don’ts…

Do…

Use language that is informal, warm, and friendly. Tell a story about the job, the practice, and why your role is the ideal next career step for the candidate you’re seeking. Talk about your team and how everyone works well together. Put yourself in the mind of your target applicant.

Be short on itemized tasks. The right candidate knows what’s needed. Four or five tasks is enough.

Be long on what makes your practice unique and what softer attributes you’re seeking.

Study the competition. Go to some of the dull, traditional veterinary job boards, search for a similar role, and read the top three ads. Then write something much, much better. Or browse some of our Job Campaigns, and you’ll quickly grasp the styles that succeed.

Don’t…

Don’t tell everyone about all your equipment, no matter how proud you are. It’s not essential to this task, and candidates assume you’ll provide the tools to do the job. If you do have an intergalactic traveling scanner, by all means share that, but talk about what it will do for patients, not how many giga-things it has.

Don’t use job ad parlance or clichés such as “We are seeking…” (of course you are) or “The incumbent will…” (yes, we still see these).

Don’t get too creative or quirky. It may stand out, and people will say “great ad,” but responses from quality candidates are 25-50% lower.

Don’t oversell the role. Be transparent about your expectations.

Don’t publish a Job Description. A JD is a list of tasks. An ad is there to sell.

Don’t exaggerate. When a job sounds too good to be true, it generally is and will only connect with applicants who are gullible, unrealistic, and non-performers.

Like all great consumer product ads, a Job Campaign entices people to action. It gets them interested. It is not there to close the deal. And a job ad isn’t some Harry Potter sorting hat either, making applicants fill out complex forms or jump through hoops to apply – you want to cast your net as wide as is sensible, and then make it easy to act. What you really want is to receive plenty of resumes to consider. Having too many to choose from is a much better problem than having one… or in this candidate-short economy, potentially even none. So start telling your great Story.

Here’s what the ideal Veterinary Job Campaign should look like…

We’ve tested and reviewed the results from hundreds of Job Campaigns and identified the elements that deliver the best candidates. You can see a sample Job Campaign here to follow along.

Headline

A short, sharp, six-word max headline that includes a well-recognized job title. Don’t get too clever as applicants and search engines are quick to discount odd terminology.

3 Key Bullet Points

These are the highlights aimed at engaging the “suspect” and turning them into a “prospect,” encouraging them to read on.

• One about the practice team and culture
  • “Join our warm, welcoming, talented and highly collaborative team”
• One about the role that will engage the best candidates
  • “Let your passion for pets and best practice veterinary care shine every day”
• One about the appeal of the location, work-life balance, or lifestyle
  • “Leadership closely attuned to work-life balance, in our ideal lifestyle location”

The Pitch

In two or three sentences, summarize the role and why they should apply. Often it’s best to write this last once you have the body of your ad composed. This is your punchy “sales” intro, so make it really appealing.

You’ve got three seconds. These first couple of sentences are like the opening paragraph in a novel or the first scene in a new Netflix drama, except way more important. You’ve got three seconds to engage with each candidate, gain their trust, and encourage them to read on.

About Us

Tell your story. About you and your team, how great they are, and how well you all work together. A candidate is potentially looking at who they’ll be working with for the next few years, so this is a crucial element.

Include an overview of your practice philosophy concerning quality veterinary medicine and a little history if it adds to your story. If you do have a brand spanking new piece of equipment, by all means mention it, but don’t spout a list including the kitchen sink. After all, if you were adding a painter to your team, how much time would you spend telling them about the brushes and paint?

Team Member Quote

Nothing says “join us” more than a compelling quote from a current team member about how much they enjoy working in the practice. Apart from the actual nice things they say, including a team member quote lets potential candidates know that there’s someone prepared to go on the record to reinforce what the rest of the ad is saying.

About This Role

Everybody knows what a Vet, Nurse, or Vet Tech does, right? Wrong. You need to specify four to six essential skills (and no more, just the highly relevant ones) that are particularly important to you and your hospital.

This helps candidates understand your priorities within the wide range of abilities that are typical on a day-to-day basis and allows them to mentally tick off that their skills and strengths are a match, which creates engagement.

About You (we mean the candidate)

Building your culture is an essential foundation for your business, and it’s crucial to achieve harmony, balance, and diversity as well as focus on particular personality traits and attributes that reflect the culture you desire.

Here you want to list four or five of the “softer skills” you seek, such as empathy, compassion, leadership, or the ability to deal with adversity gracefully and professionally.

Our Location

Nowadays, “where” is sometimes as important as “salary and benefits,” and people often have preconceptions that you need to unwind. Two or three sentences about the locale or the region help applicants connect with your practice and the destination.

Help them understand the advantages of working in your community and potentially moving there from a distance away. Help them remove some of their subconscious misconceptions and see your location in the best light.

Our Offer

Yes, here comes the tricky bit. For various reasons (some competitive, some relating to existing team members, and some to do with history), practice owners, partners, and managers are very reluctant to publish job ads with indicative offers that state dollar amounts openly.

We get that, but our test research has proven that Job Campaigns without at least a broad salary range (eg, $50-60k or $120-150k) get less than half the number of clicks. In addition, many countries, states, and even cities are passing laws that require a credible salary range must be included in any job advertisement.

You also need to state the rest of the benefits you offer, even if you think it’s obvious, because to many it’s not obvious. Salary, production bonus, sign-on bonus, medical/dental/vision, insurances, paid vacation, paid sick leave, maternity leave, continuing education, licensure, memberships, 401k co-contributions, or superannuation guarantees. You don’t have to offer all of these, but state openly what you’re offering.

It’s Time To Apply

Add a short, sharp paragraph rephrasing and restating your opening pitch with a solid call to action, including the contact name of the person to apply to, and encouraging a preliminary phone call to chat about the role.

Housekeeping Items

Ideally you should include your practice name (so-called confidential or blind ads get meager response rates, if any at all), your address, licensing requirements, email address for applications, and so on.

And to top things off, make sure you have a sharp logo plus you also need to tidy up your website and social media accounts, as these are the first places candidates will look when considering whether they should follow through and apply.

And then, have at least three people read it, preferably at least one not from the veterinary industry. Apart from grammar and spell-checking, you’ll get valuable feedback on the overall appeal of what you’re offering.

Explore our Job Campaign Copy Writing Service

Closing thoughts…

A Job Ad is like an artificial fly to a trout fisherman. It’s both pretty and functional. Like the fly attracts and the hook captures, so it is with job ads for Vet, Vet Nurse, and Vet Technician candidates. Your Job Ad attracts their attention and engages or hooks them. It’s then up to you to reel them in, so make sure you respond same day to every inquiry and acknowledge every application on the day you receive it.

“Can I be bothered going to such trouble? It’s just a Job Ad?”

No, it isn’t.

You know that your team is the foundation of your business and more important than any other thing or task in your practice, from being a primary revenue driver to delivering best practices in Veterinary Medicine. Put in the effort to secure the very best candidates, and the time and effort will provide the best return on investment you’ll ever make.

Sample Veterinary Job Ad

You can find an example of the ideal Veterinary Job Ad here.

Explore our Job Campaign Copy Writing Service

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