The most important capabilities for your job are FREE!
We are at the time of year again when many budding vets are contemplating their first job – where should they look? What field is best? New grad scheme or not? Am I good enough? What about all the disruption Covid has caused? It is easy to see how this can be both exciting and stressful for new graduates. But the team here at Vet Pursuits would like to share this great news with you, as well as all other vets considering their next career move:
When the profession globally was recently surveyed to see what makes vets employable, the key capabilities are all free to you! This sounds great, and it really is! The factors rated as clearly more important than others include HONESTY, ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR, COMMUNICATION, KNOWING WHEN TO ASK FOR HELP and a WILLINGNESS TO LEARN. None of these require anything other than the right mindset and thought processes. Ultimately all of these just come down to versions of honesty – be honest with yourselves, clients, colleagues and employers and you will make yourself employable.
In a secondary part of the study, where respondants were asked to rank in order, COMMUNICATION WITH CLIENTS, COMMUNICATION WITH COLLEAGUES and TEAMWORK were the top 3 – again, things that cost no money, and just require honesty and the right mindset. Another way of putting this is that the most important capabilities for employability are attitudinal or values based. Not knowledge or skills based. People can learn new skills and assimilate knowledge over time but the right attitude is what will shine through.
And a quick message to all vet students out there, whether graduating this year or not – you are all brilliant. You have gone through things we could only imagine and are coming out of the other side. You are the future of the profession and that future looks bright.
Bell, M.A., Cake, M. and Mansfield, C.F., International multi‐stakeholder consensus for the capabilities most important to employability in the veterinary profession. Veterinary Record.