Veterinary Voices — Episode 272
Why Your Clinic Values Belong Everywhere Except Your Job Ad
Julie South [00:00:07]: If your job ad says your clinic is passionate about animal welfare and has a supportive team culture, this episode is going to explain why those statements are doing nothing for your recruitment.
Welcome to Veterinary Voices — culture storytelling conversations for forward-thinking vet clinics.
I'm Julie South and this is Episode 272.
Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs — helping forward-thinking clinics get recognised by the vets and nurses they want to hire.
Stay to the end, because I'm going to give you a quick test you can run on your own job ad or careers page right now. It'll tell you whether your values are working for you — or just taking up space.
Julie South [00:01:04]: Since the pandemic, vet clinics have been asking their job ads to do more and more work to attract applications from suitably qualified, good culture-fit vets and nurses.
This is the third episode in a series looking at the load being put on job ads — and why job ads aren't designed to carry that load.
Today we're talking about values.
Pretty much every single vet clinic job ad has them in one form or another. Things like: passionate about animal welfare. Team-focused. Committed to work-life balance. Supportive environment. Progressive and forward-thinking.
Read enough of those ads and you'll notice something. They all say the same things. Not similar things. The same things. Word for word, in some cases.
Julie South [00:02:05]: And that's where the problem is.
When every clinic is saying the exact same thing, no clinic is saying anything.
Values listed in a job ad aren't values. They're what I call wallpaper. They're there because someone decided they should be there, because other job ads have them, because it feels like the right thing to include. The vet or nurse reading the ad has seen them so many times that their eyes glide right past.
Now, these ads aren't lying, necessarily. The clinic probably does care about animal welfare — well, you hope so. The team probably is supportive — again, you hope so.
But stating a value isn't the same as demonstrating one. And a job ad can only state. It can't demonstrate.
Julie South [00:02:47]: Here's where the distinction matters.
A value that's stated is a claim. A value that's demonstrated is evidence.
Claims are cheap. Words are cheap. Anyone can make them. Every clinic does make them — which is precisely why they carry no weight.
Evidence is specific. It's observable. It's something a vet or nurse can point to and say — yes, I can see that. I believe that. That feels real.
Julie South [00:03:35]: Think about what "we're passionate about animal welfare" tells a prospective vet or nurse.
Nothing they couldn't have assumed already. Every clinic is meant to be passionate about animal welfare. It's not a differentiator. It's a baseline.
Now think about what it would look like to demonstrate that value instead.
Julie South [00:04:18]: It might be a team member leaving a verified anonymous employee review — like we talked about last week in Episode 271 — saying: "We've never once been pushed to discharge an animal before it was ready because a bed was needed. The pressure just isn't there."
Or it might be that same team member chatting with me on a podcast, as part of their clinic's culture evidence, saying exactly the same thing.
Same value. Completely different weight.
One is the clinic telling you what it believes. The other is someone who works there showing you what that belief looks like on a Tuesday afternoon when the pressure's on.
Julie South [00:05:13]: There's another layer to this worth naming.
Many clinics have values on their websites — a values page, or a section on their about page. Sometimes framed nicely, sometimes with icons. And those values were probably developed thoughtfully — workshopped with the team, carefully worded, genuinely meant.
But here's what happens when those values make their way into a job ad.
They get compressed. Flattened into a bullet point or a sentence. All the context, the texture, the story behind them — gone. What's left is just a label.
"We value continuous learning."
Julie South [00:06:03]: What does that mean in practice? Is there a CPD budget? Is there time protected for it? Are senior vets actively mentoring? Does the practice owner come back from conference and share what they learned?
The job ad doesn't say. It can't. It's not designed to. There isn't room. And even if there were, a list of bullet points isn't the right format for that kind of story.
Which is exactly why values don't belong in job ads. Not because they're not important — they are critically important. But because a job ad is the wrong tool to carry them.
If you're listening to this and wondering how you can make your values fit in a job ad — stop. That's the wrong question.
The right question is: how do I demonstrate my values outside the job ad entirely? Because that's where the work is. Not in rewriting the bullet point. In building something the bullet point was never capable of being.
Julie South [00:06:50]: A quick interruption.
If you're wondering where to start, the Cultural Visibility Stress Test is a good place. Eight questions. Free. Takes about three minutes. You'll find it at careers.vetclinicjobs.com.
Now back to today's show.
Julie South [00:07:27]: I promised to leave you with a test. Here it is.
Go to your most recent job ad — or your careers page. Find where your values are listed.
For each one, ask: is this something only my clinic could say? Or could any clinic in the country copy this and paste it into their ad without anyone noticing the difference?
If the honest answer is that any clinic could say it — it's not doing anything for you. It's the wallpaper I talked about earlier.
Julie South [00:08:22]: The values that work in recruitment aren't the ones that are stated most clearly. They're the ones that are shown — through the specific, real, lived experiences of the people who work there.
That's not what a job ad does. That's what culture storytelling does. And it's why the clinics investing in that now are building something that a job ad never could.
If you'd like to talk about how your clinic's values could be shown rather than wallpapered and stated — please email me. julie@vetclinicjobs.com.
Tune in next week for Episode 273 — because we're going to look at yet another task that job ads were never designed to do.
This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self.
And remember — when vets and nurses can see you're their kind of people, you stop hiring strangers. You start welcoming people who already feel like they belong at your clinic. Because you're their kind of clinic.
Julie South [00:09:21]: Until next week.
