It’s important to remember that there are a number of different factors involved in finding the right Animal Health jobs. Those factors involve you, they involve employers, and they involve the market.
Perfect Animal Health jobs don’t exist
It’s also important to remember that there is no perfect Animal Health job, just like there is no perfect job candidate. The VET Recruiter has been in business for more than 20 years. If the perfect Animal Health job existed, we would have found it already.
Sometimes, people start a job and they love it, but then they stop loving it over time. The reason is not necessarily because the job changed. The reason is perhaps they’ve grown bored with it, their skills have grown beyond the job, or they’re looking to grow more in their career. Your attitude about your job is important. It’s like marriage. You love your spouse, but there are some days that you don’t necessarily like your spouse. It’s the same with a job. You may love your job overall, but you may not like it every day.
Here’s a quote that applies to this discussion: “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Here’s another one: “I don’t go to work every day, I go to fun.” What you do for a living is a big part of you. If you work eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, that’s 2,000 hours each year. Many of us work more than 40 hours every week.
Then add the fact that the average person needs 192 hours each year commuting to and from work. Put all of that together, and more than 25% of your life is invested in your work. This is why it’s important to find a job that you enjoy, that you’re passionate about, and that gets you excited and out of bed every morning. If you enjoy what you do and are passionate about it, then that’s likely the right Animal Health job for you.
Animal Health jobs and the employment marketplace
In order to find the right Animal Health job, it’s important to know what’s happening in the employment marketplace right now. As of the publication of this article, the National Unemployment Rate is at a historically low level. Not only that, but the unemployment rate in the Veterinary profession is even lower than it is for the rest of the country. In fact, According to the job search site Zippia, the unemployment rate in the profession has dropped from 1.0% in 2013 to about 0.2%.
On the Animal Health side, things are slightly different. That’s because the current business environment in the Animal Health industry includes mergers, buyouts, acquisitions, and corporate realignments. There has been a tremendous amount of consolidation among the leading Animal Health companies. This poses a bit of a challenge for those working in the Animal Health industry. That’s because when a consolidation occurs, the organization does not need two teams of technical services veterinarians, they don’t need two sales teams, two marketing teams, two research and development teams, etc. There is often some redundancy.
So while there is opportunity in the current marketplace, there are also plenty of challenges. It’s definitely a factor in terms of finding great new Animal Health jobs.
(Find out more about who we are at The VET Recruiter and discover how our leadership team can help you grow your career.)
Your value and Animal Health jobs
Everything in the employment marketplace comes down to value, and it does so in two key ways:
- There’s the value that you can provide to an employer.
- There’s the value that an employer can provide to you.
This is essentially what the employment marketplace is all about. An employer hires you because you have value, and you work for an employer because it offers value to you. However, it’s very rare for a relationship to last forever in the world of employment.
The days of your grandfather working for 50 years and then getting a gold watch are over. Most of us are not going to stay with the same company our entire career like that and get a gold watch. There may not even be any employers that hand out gold watches like that anymore.
Today, people change their Animals Health jobs more often. In fact, some members of the Millennial Generation are changing jobs as frequently as every 18 months to two years. We at The VET Recruiter have clients now who are not interested in interviewing someone who has been with the same company for 20 years because they say they are not a risk taker or won’t do well with change.
As mentioned above, everything in the employment marketplace comes down to value. However, as a professional, you should always be focused first on what you can give to an employer and not what it can give you. We’ve encountered professionals who have the attitude of “As soon as my employer gives me a raise, then I’ll work harder.” That’s the wrong attitude.
The right attitude is to improve the value that you provide to your employer and be the best contributor that you can be. The more value you create, the more opportunities you’ll have for compensation and advancement.
The Principle of Reciprocity
The approach for this attitude is actually a philosophy called the “Principle of Reciprocity.” This principle means that when someone gives us something, we feel compelled to give something in return. That’s why the focus needs to be giving to others first instead of taking.
This this philosophy is best summed up with a quote from the late motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. He said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” The employees who are providing the most value to their employers are typically the ones with the most opportunities available to them in their careers. The more value you provide to your employer, the more opportunities you will have in return.
Focus on what you can do for other people. Focus on the value you can provide for them. If you make that your focus and you benefit other people, then what you want will be taken care of.
(See The VET Recruiter’s mission statement and core values for helping job seekers and employers, and also read and watch candidate and client testimonials about our services.)
Hard skills vs. soft skills in the workplace
One of the main forms of value are the skills that you possess. There are two types of skills that organizations look for in potential employees, hard skills and soft skills. Let’s define these two terms.
Hard skills possess the following two characteristics:
- They are more easily teachable, which means that you can learn them. You can either teach yourself, other people can teach you, or both.
- They are quantifiable. This means they produce quantifiable results and you can be graded and/or evaluated for your ability.
The vast majority of technical skills are hard skills. Soft skills, on the other hand, refer to skills that involve the way you interact with other people, specifically your boss, your co-workers, and your clients or customers. Soft skills are also referred to in other ways, one of which is “people skills,” which you’ve probably heard before.
Keep in mind that soft skills are also teachable, which means you can learn them. However, they can sometimes be more difficult to learn, especially if you don’t have an inclination for them. Some professionals are just inherently better at dealing with other people.
Now it doesn’t matter if a skill is hard or soft, it has to do one of three things:
- Help the company make money.
- Help the company save money.
- Provide value in some other way to the company.
Once again, it all comes down to value. The skills that employers want are the ones that will provide them with value of some kind. If you can’t offer that value to employers, they will be less likely to want to hire you.
Many professionals have the same hard skill set in the marketplace. So the question becomes, “How do you set yourself apart from everyone else?” The answer is with your soft skill set.
The soft skills that are the most valuable are called transferrable soft skills. These are soft skills that can be applied to a number of different areas within a specific industry, and they can even be transferred from one career to another.
Soft skills for landing Animal Health jobs
The goal, of course, is to develop as many transferable soft skills as you can. They make you more valuable to your current employer and they will make you a more attractive candidate to other organizations once you make the next move in your career. Below are six of the main transferrable soft skills:
#1—Communication
The ability to communicate well is a highly sought-after skill in the marketplace. Being proficient in ALL forms of communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is essential to increasing your worth and value as an employee and a candidate.
#2—Active Listening
This one is especially important. We at The VET Recruiter have interviewed people who want to talk the whole time rather than listen. In an interview situation, for example, you have to practice active listening or you will miss out on hearing important information about what the employer is trying to tell you and you won’t learn.
We’ve instructed numerous candidates about this over the years. We’ve told them that they must practice active listening skills during interviews. Then some will go into the interview and talk most of the time. Not only that, but they also interrupt the interviewers. As you might imagine, they do not get the job.
Whether you are going through an interview process or just in your day-to-day work, this is a highly valuable skill.
#3—Time management
The ability to maximize your time is another valuable skill. This equates to higher levels of production, which in turn equates to higher levels of revenue and ultimately higher levels of profit for your employer. And that’s exactly how you tie a skill or trait directly to a potential employer’s bottom line.
This might sound a little harsh, but most companies are in business to make a profit. They’re not in business to simply offer you an Animal Health job for no reason or “out of the blue.” Today’s candidates want to work for an organization that’s bigger than simply making a profit, and that’s great. Employers should be giving back to the community. At the same time, the company has be profitable or it can not stay in business. That’s the reality of the marketplace. You want your company to be profitable so that you have a job and so your company can continue to offer the products and services that it offers.
#4—Sales
This is also called the art of persuasion or influence. No, this does not mean that you have to work in a sales role. However, the ability to “sell” something, including an idea or your point of view, is valuable, no matter where you work or your position in the organization. If you possess the ability to persuade other people, then you possess value that other people do not.
#5—Leadership
Okay, not everyone is a leader. If everyone was a leader, then there would be no leaders. Organizations need leaders, and they need them at all levels. They want to hire them, grow them from within, do whatever they need to get them. Specifically, though, they need genuine, authentic leaders . . . not people who think they’re a leader but who really are not.
And there are differences between being a leader and just being a manager. Below are nine differences listed in a Forbes.com article by William Arruda:
#1—Leaders create a vision, managers create goals.
#2—Leaders are change agents, managers maintain the status quo.
#3—Leaders are unique, managers copy.
#4—Leaders take risks, managers control risk.
#5—Leaders are in it for the long haul, managers think short-term.
#6—Leaders grow personally, managers rely on existing skills.
#7—Leaders build relationships, managers build systems.
#8—Leaders coach, managers direct.
#9—Leaders create fans, managers have employees.
So if you’re in a management role or you aspire to be in a management role, keep these differences in mind. You want to be a leader of people and NOT just a manager.
#6—Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence can be broken down into five basic components. Those components are as follows:
#1—Awareness: Being aware of your emotions and the emotions of others.
#2—Regulation: Being able to control your own emotions and your ability to influence the emotional response of other people.
#3—Empathy: Being able to empathize with others and put yourself in their place.
#4—Motivation: Applying emotional intelligence to real-world situations for the purpose of solving problems.
#5—Social Skills: Being self-aware and at ease in social settings. This can come naturally or be developed.
Using a recruiter to find Animal Health jobs
Another way to find out about exciting new Animal Health jobs is to align yourself with an experienced and reputable recruiter that has a track record of placing people just like you. Recruiters have the expertise and the connections to help you grow your career. They know which employers are hiring and which ones have the best Animal Health jobs in the industry. In fact, they have access to what is known as the “hidden job market.” These are jobs that are not advertised through traditional means such as online job postings. You can only know about these positions by working with a recruiter.
The VET Recruiter has helped job seekers and candidates find the best Animal Health jobs for more than 20 years. And we want to help YOU, too!
Check out The VET Recruiter’s successes working with job seekers and candidates. We also invite you to submit your resume and create a profile on our website.
You can also call (918) 488-3901 or (800) 436-0490 or send an email to stacy@thevetrecruiter.com.