Structured hiring gains traction in veterinary workforce strategy
Bottom line
Version 1
Veterinary leaders looking for practical hiring and retention guidance have a fresh playbook in Today’s Veterinary Business: “Building and Keeping Your Dream Veterinary Hospital Staff.” The article lays out a structured approach to staffing, starting with clearly defined core values, stronger job descriptions, and a multistep interview process that includes behavioral questions and, where appropriate, paid working interviews. It also emphasizes formal onboarding, with clear expectations and 30-, 60-, and 90-day milestones, rather than expecting new hires to “sink or swim.” That advice lines up with broader workforce reporting across the profession showing that retention hinges less on quick fixes and more on culture, leadership, team function, and how well practices support people from the first contact through their first months on the job. (todaysveterinarybusiness.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, this is a reminder that staffing problems often begin long before a resignation. AAHA’s retention research found that about 30% of veterinary professionals in clinical practice planned to leave their jobs, and its findings point to team dynamics, leadership, achievable expectations, wellbeing support, and career development as major drivers of whether people stay. A more deliberate hiring and onboarding system can help practices reduce costly turnover, improve team cohesion, and give new associates, technicians, CSRs, and assistants a clearer path to success. Recent literature is also reinforcing that structured onboarding and mentorship may improve technician satisfaction and retention, especially compared with a “sink-or-swim” model. (aaha.org)
What to watch: Expect more practices to formalize paid working interviews, mentorship, and 30-60-90-day onboarding plans as workforce retention stays a top management priority. (todaysveterinarybusiness.com)
Version 2
A new practice-management article in Today’s Veterinary Business argues that veterinary hospitals can’t hire their way out of workforce strain with ad hoc recruiting alone. Instead, “Building and Keeping Your Dream Veterinary Hospital Staff” presents staffing as a system: define the culture first, recruit against it, evaluate candidates in stages, and onboard them with structure. That framing arrives as veterinary employers continue to face persistent retention pressure, with industry groups and consultants emphasizing that hiring success depends as much on fit, leadership, and support as on technical skill. (todaysveterinarybusiness.com)
The message builds on several years of workforce discussion in veterinary medicine. AAHA’s “Stay, Please” research has described retention as a profession-wide challenge, reporting that roughly 30% of practice team members were considering leaving their current roles. Its work also suggests that attrition is driven by a mix of human factors, including whether staff feel appreciated, whether leaders are supportive, whether schedules are workable, and whether the team functions well together. In that context, advice on recruiting and onboarding is no longer just administrative housekeeping; it’s part of a retention strategy. (aaha.org)
The staffing framework highlighted by Today’s Veterinary Business mirrors other recent guidance from the publication and allied practice-management sources. Recent TVB reporting has pushed practices to write more realistic job ads, use behavioral interviewing to assess how candidates handle feedback and client communication, and avoid rushing into hiring before defining the role and the practice’s expectations. It has also emphasized that onboarding should begin once an offer is accepted, not on day one, and that early structure matters because new hires are especially impressionable in their first month. (todaysveterinarybusiness.com)
One notable point is the role of working interviews. In veterinary hiring, they remain common because they let practices observe real-world communication, pacing, and team interaction. But HR guidance in Today’s Veterinary Business stresses that working interviews must be paid if the candidate performs work that benefits the hospital, and practices should verify workers’ compensation and business-insurance coverage before using them. That’s an important operational detail for hospital leaders who may see working interviews as a best practice but haven’t fully considered compliance and liability. (todaysveterinarybusiness.com)
Outside commentary broadly supports the article’s core themes. AAHA has explicitly called onboarding “the first step in effective retention,” and consultant Stacy Pursell has argued that retention starts before a new employee’s first day because candidates can still disengage or accept another opportunity if the transition is poorly handled. Meanwhile, a newly indexed JAVMA article on veterinary technician onboarding points to growing interest in structured, mentorship-based onboarding as a way to improve satisfaction and retention over a “sink-or-swim” training culture. Taken together, the reaction from industry groups and emerging literature suggests the article is tapping into a wider shift from reactive hiring to intentional people systems. (aaha.org)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, especially practice managers, medical directors, and hospital leaders, the takeaway is practical. Turnover is expensive, destabilizing, and hard on team morale, but retention work often starts with the basics: honest recruiting, values-based selection, clear job expectations, consistent feedback, and a real onboarding plan. In a market where flexibility, leadership quality, wellbeing, and team culture increasingly shape employment decisions, hospitals that still rely on rushed hiring and informal training may be making their staffing problems worse. A structured 30-60-90-day ramp can help new team members integrate faster, while giving leaders checkpoints to coach early and correct mismatches before they become resignations. (aaha.org)
There’s also a broader culture question underneath the hiring mechanics. Core values only help if leadership consistently models them. Earlier TVB guidance has noted that employees quickly notice when a practice says teamwork and service matter but managers behave differently under pressure. That gap can undermine both recruiting credibility and retention outcomes, especially in a candidate-driven labor market where applicants are evaluating the hospital as closely as the hospital is evaluating them. (todaysveterinarybusiness.com)
What to watch: The next phase of this conversation is likely to focus less on whether practices should formalize hiring and onboarding, and more on how they measure results. Expect more attention to first-year retention, technician-specific onboarding, paid working interview policies, mentorship, and schedule flexibility as hospitals try to translate workforce advice into durable staffing gains. (aaha.org)