How to Hire the Right Person for Your Veterinary Practice

I have hired for every role in the hospital, and I have hired badly enough times to know exactly how it happens. I saw the stress on my overworked, fatigued team, decided the candidate in front of me was “good enough,” and rushed the process. That rushed step is almost always where the trouble was hiding, and the discipline is in refusing to shortcut it in the exact moment you are tired and short-staffed and most tempted to.

These are my steps. They don’t have to be your steps, but you need a system you adhere to every time. Consider this the overview, the first piece in a series, and over the coming weeks I will give each step its own article that digs into the details. One thing before we start: whoever is responsible for hiring has to block real time for it on their own calendar and be fully present at every step, not just physically present while their mind is on the floor.

Step 1: Screen the resume

Goal
Shrink the pool so you spend your interview time only on genuine contenders.

The resume is your cheapest filter, which is why it comes first. Read it for history and trajectory, whether the moves between jobs make sense and whether the experience maps to the role, and treat a tailored cover note as a sign this person is applying to you rather than blasting the same file at every clinic in the county. One rule I hold to, for support and client-facing roles rather than credentialed positions like LVT or DVM: I don’t automatically discard candidates from adjacent industries. A strong client service background from another field can be worth more than years in vet med, so I screen those resumes in rather than out and let the interview tell me about the person.

→ Resume review: what to actually look for (future article to follow)

Step 2: The phone or video interview

Goal
Verify baseline qualifications, communication skills, schedule availability, and salary expectations before anyone drives anywhere.

Make no mistake, this is an interview, so treat it like one, with a set list of questions and a clear sense of what each is screening for. Walk their employment history, ask why they left prior positions since that is rarely on a resume, address any gaps, and confirm the schedule and pay range line up before going further, all while reading whether they are friendly, engaged, and actually listening. Video beats phone whenever you can get it, because you learn whether they make eye contact, whether they are distracted, and whether they prepared and presented themselves like the interview mattered.

→ The screening interviews: phone, video, and in person (future article to follow)

Step 3: The in-person interview

Goal
Assess personality, core competencies, and overall fit.

This is where you read what a resume cannot show, how they carry themselves, how they handle a harder question in real time, and how they treat the people they don’t think they need to impress. It is also where disposition finally comes into view, and disposition is why I keep an open mind about support and client-facing candidates from other industries: a warm person with great instincts can outperform someone with a vet med history and a sour attitude, because teaching vaccine protocols is far easier than fixing a personality. Hire the disposition and train the medicine.

→ The screening interviews: phone, video, and in person (future article to follow)

Step 4: The working interview

Goal
See how someone actually works, not just how they interview.

If you take one step from this list, take this one. A working interview is where you see a candidate’s real level of interest and engagement and how they interact with the team, the things an interview across a desk simply cannot show you. There is enough to say about running one well that it gets its own piece.

→ How to run a veterinary working interview

Step 5: Reference and prior employment checks

Goal
Confirm the story holds up, and hear what a resume and an interview will never tell you.

These are the calls that take the longest to get returned, and they are worth the wait. Call the listed references, but remember they were hand-picked to say nice things, so the higher-value move is calling prior workplaces beyond just the last one. The candidate who is outgoing and gregarious and has all the lingo down pat is exactly the one you want to check, because a prior employer may be the one to tell you about the chronic call-outs or the pot-stirring. Vet med is a small world, so lean on your own network too: a trusted contact with overlap is a better read than any reference the candidate chose for you.

→ Due diligence: references, prior employment, and screening (future article to follow)

Step 6: The optional background check and drug screen

Goal
Apply role-appropriate due diligence, evenly and deliberately.

Set your policy by position before a candidate is in front of you and apply it evenly to everyone in that role, since consistency is what keeps it fair and, in some cases, legal. The laws vary by state, so know yours.

→ Due diligence: references, prior employment, and screening (future article to follow)

Why you front-load all of this

Every hour you put in up front is paid back by the right hire, and settling because someone was “good enough” rarely works out. The hard part is that you are usually hiring when your team is tired and short-handed, which is exactly when “good enough” looks most tempting, so the real work is figuring out how to carry that team through the stretch, covering the gap and lightening the load however you can, so you can hold out for the right person instead of rushing the wrong one. Every team I have ever led agreed on this when I asked: they would far rather wait for the right teammate than take on the burden of the wrong one, and holding out has never once let me down.

— Dr. V
The Gray Oak Journal

Dr. V is a veterinarian with over twenty years of clinical and operational leadership experience. She has owned and operated several veterinary hospitals, weathered many shifts in the industry, and served on advisory councils. She writes The Gray Oak Journal at grayoakjournal.com.