Sometimes within the veterinary profession, we can feel like we have our own issues that other businesses and professions do not suffer from. And this can seem more acute when recruitment is discussed. It has been the case for a few years now that there are more vacancies than there are people to fill them, with extremely low levels of effective unemployment (those actively looking for jobs) within the profession.
However, with the releasing of restrictions in the UK following high vaccination rates against Covid-19, a recent BBC report has found that a perfect storm now exists of the fastest rise in permanent job availability for 24 years, tied with the lowest availability of job seekers in the same timeframe. The survey on which this was based by KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) found that the public sector was suffering, but the steepest increase in demand is for permanent, private sector positions, particularly in IT, the hospitality industry and engineering.
Cybersecurity and intelligence consultancy firm PGI recently advertised for 10 positions, but were unable to fill any through external recruiting, with 2 positions filled through in-house training. These kind of recruitment examples have been seen in the veterinary profession for a while now, with many employers reporting a zero response rate to traditional advertising.
Interestingly, the School of Coding in Wolverhampton has seen a dramatic rise in requests to contact students before they even start courses to recruit post-graduation. Our take on this is that for practices to actively recruit the best graduates, they need to actively engage with EMS – observe, market and recruit the best graduates by giving them the optimum experience during their clinical studies.
Whilst we are aware this may give little solace to those struggling to recruit at the moment, we will be keeping a close eye on proceedings to see if there are any ideas that may cross over to the veterinary profession. The full BBC report can be found here.