How to Get More 'Bites' on Your Job Listing

Stacy Pursell, BA, CPC, CERS, founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, explains what getting a "bite" on your job listing means, and how to increase the number of bites you receive for an open position.

"First, let's clarify what 'bites' means. For example, a practice could be getting applicants for an open position, but they're not good fits. As a result, they don't consider those applications to be true bites. Most of the time, bites means qualified candidates who apply for the position.

With that in mind, this all boils down to your talent pool and how big it is. Ideally, you want to make your talent pool as large as possible. However, there are some veterinary practice owners who use only online job advertisements in an effort to find suitable candidates. The problem with only using that approach is, typically, top candidates are not actively looking for a new position. And since they're not actively looking for a new job, they're not going to go online and read through the job advertisements. So right away the talent pool is smaller. Not only that, but some of the best candidates are being left out of the pool, and that's like a double whammy.

The second problem is the online application itself. Career builder conducted a study a couple of years ago, and according to that study, 60% of job seekers quit in the middle of filling out online job applications. The study stated that there are two main reasons why this is the case. Those reasons are how long the application process is and how complex the process is. So, more than half of people who start to fill out an online job application don't finish the application, and that makes the talent pool even smaller.

In this current market, veterinary employers need to be more proactive and do more than just use online job advertisements if they want more success hiring the correct candidates that they want to hire."