Every practice posting an open req right now is competing for the same shrinking pool of credentialed vet techs and DVMs, and the practices offering the best paycheck are not automatically winning that race. Something else is deciding it.

Adrienne Kruzer, Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), Registered Veterinary Technician (RVT), Licensed Veterinary Technician (LVT), makes exactly that case in a recent piece for Veterinary Practice News. Compensation matters, she writes, but it is one piece of a much longer chain: how a candidate finds you, how you treat them during the process, and what happens after they say yes.

Where the Pipeline Actually Starts

Corporate groups run dedicated recruitment programs and school partnerships. Most independent practices do not have that infrastructure, but Kruzer argues the opportunity is still there for practices willing to build local relationships instead of a national program. A few ways to put a practice in front of candidates before a role even opens:

  • Career fairs at vet tech and nursing schools
  • Guest lectures
  • Hosted externships and shadowing days
  • Job listing networks through local programs

The same logic extends to conferences and associations, she notes, as long as a practice targets the ones that actually match its specialty and culture. Sponsoring a booth at an equine conference will not help a general practice hire a credentialed veterinary technician (CrVT) who wants to work with exotic pets. Fit matters more than reach.

Referral bonuses round out the recruitment side of the equation. Paid out only when a referral is hired, they give existing team members a direct incentive to bring their best colleagues along, rather than leaving recruitment entirely to job boards and a hospital's own outreach.

The Candidate Experience Is Part of the Offer

A slow or impersonal hiring process costs practices candidates who never see the compensation package at all, because they have already accepted somewhere else. Prompt communication, a memorable interview process, and small gestures like a team outing or hospital swag signal something to a candidate before they have signed anything: this is what it is like to work here.

Retention Starts Where Recruitment Ends

Compensation is table stakes on both sides of the equation, but Kruzer's retention advice centers on full utilization, appropriate recognition, and proactive burnout prevention, particularly for credentialed vet techs. A hospital that hires well but leaves its CrVTs underutilized or unrecognized will keep running the same expensive recruitment cycle every year, a pattern we've dug into in more depth in why credentialed vet techs are probably underutilized.

Her prescription for finding out what actually keeps people is straightforward: ask them. Surveying current staff about benefits and needs, and running honest exit interviews when someone leaves, produces better answers than guessing, and both feed directly back into how you recruit the next round of candidates.

Treating recruitment and retention as the same ongoing project, rather than two separate fires to put out, does not require a bigger budget than the practice down the street has. The practices winning the race for a shrinking pool of candidates are the ones that already know why their last five hires said yes, and why their last five departures said no more.