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Interview Faves for Finding Your Next Vet Assistant
•Stacey Cordivano, DVM•Season 8•Episode 79
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This episode is brimming with insights from the Sustainability in Equine Practice alumni network, exploring the intricacies of interviewing potential team members. Tune in for a quick episode with tactical takeaways!
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Stacey Cordivano:
Hey there, I hope you are doing well. This episode is a little different. You're just going to be hearing from me no interview. Today. I want to share some of the insight that my fellow sustainability and equine practice alumni have shared with me. Rachel and I have been interviewing for a tech or assistant position for the last two weeks or so. I asked the best group of people that I know some of their favorite questions on how to really dig in to get to know a technician applicant. I want to share those with you today.
Stacey Cordivano:
It's always hard to add a person to the mobile team. We spend a lot of time together in the car. It's a grueling job some days. It's also great sometimes because you get to stop for ice cream, but there's a lot of time together, potentially more than in a hospital setting. I have always been hesitant to add team members, but it's definitely time. Rachel needs the help this spring. She didn't even really have a slow season this winter, like we're used to, so it is definitely time.
Stacey Cordivano:
There's just a collective wisdom in the alumni group that is SEPS. I want to share, with their permission, some of the awesome questions that they found. One that I found personally helpful that I think just found online was the question what is one thing that your friends or family members might say that they would like to change about you? I got a lot of really great answers and some good insight to who they are as a person that they wouldn't probably have brought up if I hadn't asked that question. Another great one from Dr Shalyn Crawford was do you get carsick and can you work on a computer in the car? I don't know that. I actually would have thought about that, but a huge part of the role that we're hiring for is to help with billing and exam notes while Rachel's driving Really important, although I will say Dr Lisa Kivitt, who I'm going to quote here in a minute, has found amazing goggles that will help with motion sickness. If you need that link, let me know and I will send it to you. Let's hear from Dr Kivitt.
Stacey Cordivano:
One of the ones I love that she suggested was what's an embarrassing moment or a big failure in your career thus far? How did you handle that or move on from it? I think that opens the door to a good discussion about what people consider a failure and what they do to recover from it. Another one I loved was Dr Caitlin Daly suggested asking people about the last book they read or movie they watched or a TV show that they're binging. That's really important because, like I said, we spend a lot of time together. Having something to talk about, that you're maybe on the same page as your technician in the car, can be really great and it's a good way to find out what they're into.
Stacey Cordivano:
I also made sure to ask what hobbies they had outside of work to see if there was anything that was in alignment. Dr Julie Setlage gave us a great question. She said to ask what motivates them to get out of bed and come to work. I think inherently, people are going to say horses, but the ones that expanded a little bit more on that was helpful to see how they operate on their day-to-day basis. She also suggested asking how do you like to receive feedback on your performance? I got some great answers from that.
Stacey Cordivano:
A lot of the people we had interviewing were fairly young, so I wasn't even sure that they would have an answer to that, but I was shocked at how many did and most of them said they wished they had more, which was really important to know and also great to hear, because I think that's beneficial for everybody. And then Dr Louise Batt suggested bringing up the idea of core values and seeing what they thought of were their core values, to see if they were in alignment with our practices core values. So I made sure to send them the list that I love from Brunet Brown ahead of time for their ride along interviews. I didn't ask them this in their initial Zoom interview but I did ask them to think about it before they came to ride along with us so we could chat a little bit more in depth with them as we are driving around. And then Dr Kavit mentioned this too, but she suggested asking people to define some well-known horse ailments like colic laminitis, navicular syndrome. She found it a good way to really weed out who were actually horse people and who just trail road a few times, and she was like I don't care how technical they get, but it is a good weed out and this go round. We were really lucky that we had a lot of people apply with true, actual horsemanship experience, but that's not always the case.
Stacey Cordivano:
The other question that I found to be pretty helpful and it was a good way to segue into the questions from them. Portion of the interview was to ask is there anything in the job description that sounds scary or you don't want to do it? And then also, is there anything that you wish was in the job description that you didn't see listed? So that led us into a good kind of discussion about skills that they were excited to try but really didn't have any experience on. It was a way to find out some of their interests that we didn't even have listed on the job description, so I thought that was a good point of reference. So, like I said, this is a quick episode but hopefully helpful to you. Share it with a friend if you know someone looking for a tech. We are also creating a two page interview outline template with a bunch of these questions and kind of a brief overview on maybe how to get started.
Stacey Cordivano:
I know that for me, hiring was always a daunting process, and the sustainability and equine practice seminar alumni is so knowledgeable in this, and so we wanted to put out a resource using their ideas to share with everybody. It'll be a free download. I'll link it in the show notes. It'll also be on the seminar website, which is just SEP eminars. com, and you can download it for free. Check it out, bring it into your next interview and we hope that you find it helpful. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks again for listening to today's episode. I so very much appreciate you spending some of your time with me. I know how valuable it is. If you want to do me a favor, please share this episode or any of the episodes with a friend to spread the word, and you can also hit subscribe or follow wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss another episode. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you again soon.
