A veterinary practice can run a flawless hiring process, extend an offer, and hear a genuine yes, and still lose that hire before day one.
Nationally, 53% of workers who switched jobs in the past two years admit to ghosting a new employer at some point in the process, according to Click Boarding's 2026 workplace ghosting survey of 2,000 U.S. job changers. 45% of that group did it specifically in the window between accepting the offer and their first day. The interview stage isn't where most of this happens. The gap after the "yes" is.
Why a Signed Offer Doesn't Guarantee a First Day
Adam Wachtel, Click Boarding's Chief Technology Officer, has traced the mechanism behind that specific window:
Veterinary hiring runs into the identical gap: a schedule still being finalized, a scrub order or badge that hasn't gone through, a manager who assumes HR has it covered. The pattern isn't unique to veterinary medicine. It isn't gentler here, either.
ResumeTemplates.com's June 2025 survey of 1,115 U.S. hiring managers found that 54% had been ghosted by a Gen-Z candidate after extending a formal offer. That 54% breaks down into three distinct exits:
Each version costs a practice differently. The first wastes a credentialing or background-check cycle before anyone notices a problem. The second burns a fully scheduled first day, a trainer's morning, and a team that showed up expecting a new coworker. The third means training hours and a teammate's trust disappear right alongside the new hire.
Kara Dennison, ResumeTemplates.com's Head of Career Advising, argues the responsibility runs in both directions:
The same survey found that 66% of hiring managers who got ghosted say it made hiring measurably harder, mostly by slowing down every offer that came after it.
Veterinary hiring has its own version of this story. Stacy Pursell, a veterinary and animal health recruiter of more than 20 years, has written about the reasons candidates disappear during hiring. Two of those reasons show up most often after an offer is already signed:
- A counter-offer lands. The candidate used the interview, or the new offer itself, to get their current employer to match or beat it, and once that happens, the practice's offer becomes an afterthought.
- A preferred practice comes through. A candidate juggling more than one process quietly walks away from an offer they already accepted the moment their actual first choice extends one too.
Pursell's broader point is that in a candidates' market, top talent won't move for a job that feels like a lateral step. If a practice never clearly sold its culture and growth path during the process, the same leverage that got the candidate to say yes makes it just as easy for them to walk it back.
Practice-side hiring managers feel this from the other end. Tosha Zimmerman is a Certified Veterinary Technician (CVT) who has spent years on both sides of hiring, in emergency, internal medicine, and neurology practices. She wrote candidly about the toll it takes, in an essay for DrAndyRoark.com:
Her point cuts both directions. A hiring manager who gets ghosted remembers that candidate's name the next time they apply somewhere else in the same regional vet med network. A practice that goes quiet on a new hire between the offer and day one earns exactly the same reputation in return.
Closing the Gap between Offer and Day One
Most of what drives a candidate to disappear after saying yes is preventable. The fix costs far less than a lost hire does. Only 43% of hiring managers in ResumeTemplates.com's survey currently build a check-in into the weeks between offer and start date, even though that same group reports less ghosting overall. A few concrete moves turn that into standard practice:
- Confirm the details in writing the same day. Start date, schedule, dress code, and who to ask for on morning one, sent within hours of a verbal yes, not whenever the paperwork happens to catch up.
- Keep a real person checking in. A short text or call from the actual hiring manager, not just an automated onboarding portal, at least once in the two to three weeks before the start date.
- Name the counter-offer risk out loud. Ask directly whether the candidate expects their current employer to counter, and put pay and schedule on the table at the offer stage instead of hoping the subject never comes up.
- Give the culture and growth path something concrete to hold onto. A specific mentorship plan, CE budget, or path to more responsibility does more to keep an offer sticky than a general promise that "you'll love it here."
Closing this gap doesn't require new software or a bigger recruiting budget, just the same attention a practice already gives the interview stage, stretched three more weeks past the signature.
Pay, schedule, and continuing education dollars are the same terms covered in our guide to negotiating a first veterinary job offer. Being upfront about them early gives a candidate a lot less reason to keep quietly shopping after they've already said yes.
The next new hire who accepts an offer deserves a check-in scheduled before they ever have to ask for one. That's a low bar. Clearing it is fully within a practice's control, long before that new hire's actual first morning.