Episode #29 – All About The VET Recruiter®
Sharita: Welcome to “The Animal Health Employment Insider,” brought to you by The VET Recruiter. In this podcast, search consultant Stacy Pursell, founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, provides insight and practical advice for both companies and job seekers. The VET Recruiter’s mission is to help Animal Health and Veterinary organizations acquire top talent, while helping Animal Health and Veterinary professionals attain career-enhancing opportunities that increase their quality of life.
In today’s podcast, we’ll be talking about The VET Recruiter, its mission and its philosophies, and what the VET Recruiter does for organizations and also for candidates. Welcome, Stacy. Thank you for joining us.
Stacy: Hello, I’m glad to be here today, and I’m excited to talk about The VET Recruiter.
Sharita: We discussed in our previous podcast about how you decided to start your own recruiting firm. Can you talk a little bit about The VET Recruiter for us to kick things off?
Stacy: I sure can. First of all, The VET Recruiter is a direct hire executive search and recruiting firm that specializes in the Animal Health, Veterinary and Pet Products Industries. We are based in the United States and we handle recruitment throughout the United States and Canada and also accept select assignments on a global basis.
Sharita: Stacy, which specific areas does The VET Recruiter focus on?
Stacy: The VET Recruiter specializes in a number of different areas. We handle executive search and recruiting in the Animal Health, Animal Science, Animal Nutrition, Veterinary, Pet Products, and Pet Specialty industries. We pride ourselves on being the Animal Health recruiter and the Veterinary recruiter of choice.
Sharita: Is there a great demand for hiring in those areas?
Stacy: Absolutely! There was a demand more than 20 years ago, when I became the first executive recruiter to specialize in the Animal Health Industry and Veterinary Profession, which is why I decided to specialize in recruiting in Animal Health and Veterinary and there’s even more of a demand today.
Sharita: What about the mission of The VET Recruiter? Can you talk about that?
Stacy: Yes. In fact, we have a dual mission at our firm. First, our mission is to help Animal Health and Veterinary businesses acquire top talent that can help increase their bottom line on a global basis. Second, our mission is also to help Veterinary professionals gain career-enhancing opportunities that allow them to achieve the quality of life they seek.
Sharita: So that dual mission is for both clients and candidates?
Stacy: Absolutely. Ultimately, we do work for employers. They are the ones who hire us and pay our fee for filling their open positions. However, we also make it a priority to help professionals within the Animal Health and Veterinary space. We want to create the perfect match, so that the situation is a win-win for everyone involved. We don’t force people into Animal Health Jobs or Veterinary jobs that they’re not a good fit for. We want our clients to hire professionals who are a good fit and who will contribute value, and we also want the candidates we place to grow their career and enjoy working at their new employer.
Sharita: What about the philosophy of The VET Recruiter? Does your firm have a philosophy in regards to how it achieves its dual mission?
Stacy: We do, and I’d love to talk about that. We help our clients and candidates through the building of long-term relationships. That’s our main philosophy and our main approach. We do this in a few different ways. Those ways are through trust, professionalism, and results.
The best way to describe these ways is to work backwards. The first part is results. Everybody wants results. Our clients want results when they hire us for a search. Our candidates want results when they entrust us with their resume and tell us about their job search and career goals. Everything comes down to results, and when you provide those results consistently, you brand yourself as somebody who can provide them. People gravitate toward those things that produce results, especially on a regular basis.
Then we strive to provide those results in a professional fashion. For us, that means confidentiality, which is something that we’ve discussed before. We provide confidentiality for both our clients and our candidates, because that’s something that both of them want.
And then all of this leads to trust, which is the most important aspect of any relationship. If an employer or a candidate knows that we will provide results on a consistent basis and do it in a professional fashion with a high degree of confidentiality, then that employer or that client will trust us. And trust forms the basis of long-term relationships. If you don’t trust the other person or vice-versa, then the relationship is not going to last very long.
Sharita: Does The VET Recruiter have any other philosophies that you’d like to talk about?
Stacy: We do. We also have a philosophy for using an Animal Health recruiter, or what should happen when an organization decides to hire an Animal Health recruiter or Veterinary recruiter to help them fill a job opening.
Working with a good Animal Health recruiter should result in hiring the best person for the position, not the “best person looking” for a new position.
Sharita: There’s a difference between the two?
Stacy: Yes, there’s a big difference. That’s because the best person for the position may not be looking for a job. Once again, that’s the difference between an active job seeker and a passive candidate. Active job seekers are actively looking for a new job. More often than not, however, the best candidates in the market are gainfully employed, highly regarded by their current employers, and not actively looking for a new position. They have to be recruited.
When you work with an animal health recruiter or veterinary recruiter like The VET Recruiter, you’re gaining access to candidates you would not be able to get on your own. More than likely, an organization does not have access to all of those candidates. That’s why they hire an Animal Health and Veterinary recruiting firm like The VET Recruiter to help them.
Sharita: And the fact that The VET Recruiter focuses on building long-term relationships helps you in that regard?
Stacy: Yes, it does. We consider ourselves to be on the “front lines” of the employment marketplace. We talk with hundreds of professionals in the Animal Health, Veterinary, and Pet fields every month. When you’re the phone that much, you know who the best candidates are. You also know what the top employers are doing. That kind of information is valuable for both organizations and candidates.
Not only that, but by building trust with candidates, we also know what their career goals are and we know under what conditions they would make a move. Then, when an opportunity comes along that meets their requirements, we’re able to contact that candidate and present the opportunity they’ve been waiting for. Employers that have not built those kinds of relationships don’t have the chance to present their opportunity to a great candidate who has been waiting for it.
It’s a lot like putting a new roof on your house.
Sharita: It is? How is that the case?
Stacy: If you needed a new roof on your home, would you attempt to do it yourself or would you hire an expert roofing company to do it for you? It’s the same with regards to Animal Health and Veterinary recruiting. Should you attempt to do it yourself or leave it to the Animal Health and Veterinary Search Professionals? We think you should leave it in the hands of professionals who will do all of the leg work for you, freeing up your time to do what you do best.
Employers should spend their time on what they do best, which is running and managing their business. They should leave the recruiting to professionals who are experts in the search process.
Sharita: What are the size of the organizations that you work with to fill important Animal Health jobs and Veterinary jobs?
Stacy: We work with companies of all sizes. They include Fortune 100 companies, midsize companies, and startup ventures. In fact, we’ve helped to hire entire departments within startups, and I can tell you that’s a very exciting thing to be a part of. We also work with veterinary practices; both privately and corporate owned.
Sharita: I know at the beginning of the podcast, we talked about the fields in which The VET Recruiter operates. But what about the specific organizations that hire you to help them. Can you discuss the types of employers you work with?
Stacy: Of course. As you might imagine, we work heavily with Animal Health organizations. These include pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturers, biotechnology companies, medical device companies, and pet nutrition and pet food companies. We also serve companies involved with food safety diagnostics, pathogen control, and animal safety. There’s also the feed supplier side of things, which includes feed ingredient companies and feed manufacturers. And of course, we can’t forget genomics and genetics companies, emerging technology development companies, and veterinary hospitals and pharmacies.
Sharita: Wow, that is a lot! You mentioned earlier in the podcast that you also work to fill openings outside of the United States. Could you elaborate on that?
Stacy: Absolutely. In addition to completing search assignments in the United States and Canada, we have handled search assignments in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world. As I said a few minutes ago, employers want results. We pride ourselves in helping our clients locate and hire the best talent for their specific needs. We also pride ourselves on providing the results that our clients want, no matter where we have to go to get those results.
Sharita: What about the specific Animal Health jobs and Veterinary jobs that you place people in. Can you shed some light on those, as well?
Stacy: Once again, we handle recruiting in Animal Health and Veterinary at many different levels, including the executive and management levels and we handle board of director recruiting. We also handle sales and marketing and research and development, otherwise known as R&D, as well as regulatory affairs, quality assurance, professional services, and pharmacovigilance.
And of course, we place veterinarians and veterinary specialists. We place them in both corporately and privately owned veterinary practices and we place veterinarians in industry too. We recruit across species too including canine, feline, bovine, swine, poultry and equine.
Sharita: We’ve talked before about the different ways that Veterinary recruiters are paid for their services, contingency vs. retained. How does The VET Recruiter fit into that discussion?
Stacy: The VET Recruiter offers several options to Animal Health organizations, including retained search, contingency, search, and then a model that is basically a hybrid between the two. The model that we use depends upon the nature of the search, the needs of the organization, and the relationship that we have with that client.
Sharita: What else can you tell us about The VET Recruiter’s services?
Stacy: We place people not just on a direct hire basis, but we can place them on a contracting basis, as well. With a contract position, that means the person works for an employer for just a specified amount of time, usually a matter of months, and then they move on. While we provide that service, the majority of the placements that we make are direct hire placements.
Sharita: But there’s no fee to the candidate, is that correct?
Stacy: That’s right. I want to reiterate that there is not a fee to the candidate for using The VET Recruiter. The employer pays for our services.
Sharita: Stacy, as we wrap up this podcast, you’ve talked about the importance of passion before. I know we’ve discussed The VET Recruiter’s mission, its philosophies, and its services. But what about your passion—and its passion? What is it that The VET Recruiter is passionate about?
Stacy: Sharita, we are passionate about three main things at The VET Recruiter. Those things are to solve problems, to help others succeed, and to make a difference in the lives of people. Our business is all about people and all about relationships. That’s why we strive to build long-lasting relationships with people: so that we can help them to achieve their goals, no matter what those goals might be.
At The VET Recruiter, we’re pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish in the Animal Health and Veterinary executive search and recruiting area. We’re proud that we’ve been able to work with thousands of people in important Animal Health and Veterinary positions with numerous organizations and that those placements we have made have resulted in a win-win situation for those who benefited from our services.
Sharita: Stacy, thanks once again for sharing so much with us today.
Stacy: Thank you, Sharita. I look forward to our next podcast!