Pretend it's a first date. Don't make expectations of how it's going to go or worry if you'll get another one. Just be yourself and hope it all works out.
I must have some kind of Jobs-esque reality distortion field when it comes to job applying and interviews. The last three times I've switched jobs, I sent my resume to just one company, got an interview, and got an offer within 2 days. In each case, it was a matter of the company really needing someone and I got there at the right time.
The point being that it often just comes down to luck, so don't worry too much about some place not getting back to you. And be sure to prep, prep, prep.
First job lost. They removed the listing without even responding to my original cover letter/resume. I know I should expect this, but getting no answer at all instead of a simple decline is much more intolerable.
I learned this was the norm as others have stated fairly early however I have an 80% employment rate from my interviews because usually if they want me they've taken into account that I'm a brown male with a weird name plus they've seen how experienced I am meaning they know I'm going to ask for more money than they can usually dupe a younger person into.
It also doesn't hurt when they realise my English is better than anyone else's on their staff and I wear a suit to the interview, I feel as if they usually don't think there is another option. (Yes it's shameful but it's that easy in the Vet industry to win over an employer).
However recently 99% of my applications are being tossed because I cost too much.
My excellent English and my suit wearing haven't seemed to net me a higher success rate in interviews. Maybe I should try being brown.
;-)
Then again, when I'm looking for a job I tend to take a shotgun approach, so I've been on interviews I probably never should have agreed to in the first place. This was how I was taught to find a job, back in the day.
My excellent English and my suit wearing haven't seemed to net me a higher success rate in interviews. Maybe I should try being brown.
;-)
Then again, when I'm looking for a job I tend to take a shotgun approach, so I've been on interviews I probably never should have agreed to in the first place. This was how I was taught to find a job, back in the day.
I took plenty of bad jobs when I was fresh out of college.
The suit is only important in the Veterinary industry because no one bothers to dress well for interviews, maximum at casual or semi-formal clothes. Most Veterinary employers don't know what to do when you approach them professionally (another reason I'm leaving the profession, most think they are in a trade).
When they see my name they assume I'm going to be someone that people can't understand and have a thick Indian accent with broken English.
It's more or less the element of having the person you meet assume the worst and be presented with something above average.
I always wanted to be a veterinarian as a kid, but lots of obstacles in the form of dysfunctional family and a broken head got in the way pretty heavily. I'm jealous. :-)
At 36 with a young kid I'm pretty much out of the running now. My school days are over (except maybe something less intense like nursing which I may resume in a few years.)
So, my job interviews mostly consist of tap-dancing and selling my work experience and distracting from my GED and little or no college. Sometimes, I pull it off!
I agree though, it sounds like your "on paper" persona probably filters a lot of the jobs where you'd have gotten a lukewarm reception to begin with, so I guess that hurts and helps you. At least you don't waste your time on lackluster interviews...
It's a job everyone dreams about but in real life everyone hates.
If you have anyone even thinking of going to Vet school talk them out of it. If they are hell bent on a healthcare just push them into Medicine or worst case Dentistry.
It is dying a painful death worldwide, obviously more quickly where there are more Veterinarians. After 1 - 5 years most people change their career from Vet to something else or have bought a practice and are retailing (rather than practising medicine).
New graduates are working for free or as Vet Nurses it is so crowded. Even Vets in North America have had their salaries dropped by $20 - 30K over the last 6 to 7 years.
The job is so bad I'm 30 and I'm going back to University.
There's a lot of turnover in Connecticut, I guess, but there are a handful of vets who earn a great reputation by not BS-ing people and keeping prices pretty low. Maybe they're taking a big loss, I wouldn't know, but the one in particular that I've got in mind, she's been in practice for 20 or more years and shows no sign of going anywhere. She hasn't got the newest whizz-bang equipment but you can still get an exam and vaccinations done for close to 1980s prices there.
It's less about keeping prices low and more about using real science and medicine when making your decisions. If you like to use real science the majority of employers don't want you involved because it interrupts their no nonsense retail management of clients.
My 2nd last boss had 30 years of experience, didn't mean shit, he still came to me to handle all his medical cases which he couldn't guess. When I first joined so many clients patients had ailments which were being ignored or inappropriately treated. The guy didn't even know how to store drugs or record them, he should have been shut down but the regulatory bodies are too lax and he would change things up to pretend as if he was following the requirements for any audit. He was also using a loophole to pay his nurses less than what they were legally entitled and he tried to do the same to me.
The guy used a crappy free stethoscope, pretend to listen to heart and lung sounds and assume nothing was wrong with each patient, even one of the nurses dogs. Once I started medically managing her dog and it became so much healthier, every nurse had me check over each of their pets even the senior nurse. All of them also bought their own proper stethoscopes after I taught them how to use one.
The boss was so angry when this happened, his face and head turned so pink.
My vet runs her own practice, isn't beholden to anybody that I know of (maybe her bank), and favors examination over expensive tests. It took me a while to come around to seeing her in her dinky, shabby looking practice, but I'll never go anywhere else, now.
She's a minority. Most of the vets are big practices with 6-8 docs and fancy equipment and huge price tags and short exams. A ton of vets are all getting bought up by VCA in Connecticut, a big conglomerate that brings in cutting edge machines and doubles or triples the fee schedule once they get into a place. Happened to my previous local vet.
Yeah there were VCA and Banfield reps who were sent to tell us how great their companies and practices were nearing the end of our final year. I think 2 classmates bought into it, neither of them stayed, only one still works as a Vet after buying her own place with the help of her husband giving up his job and selling their house and land to move to a rural location.
To be fair a full exam should only take 15 minutes by a competent Vet, this is especially important if it's a busy practice. 30 minutes if you're doing a skin or ear case, usually only get to 45 minutes if I have the time and reason to do an ultrasound during the consult.
Some clinics will extend the period of the consult to help build a relationship with the client.
The clinical exam and history should really tell you all you need to know unless it's a bit more serious and you need to do tests or imaging.
However I know what you mean, a family friend of mine went to 3 different Vets when their puppy had gut pain and were offered x-rays, blood tests, ultrasounds. They finally came to me (at home) and after 5 minutes I worked out it was gas because the daughter had suddenly changed the diet from an all kibble diet to all fresh meat because their neighbour recommended it.
This test thing is another money making scheme designed to increase revenue. It also messes legitimate testing up because clients become suspicious of it and you often get inaccurate results from the in clinic machines that are used (these machines are favoured because of the quick turn around time on results and increased profit margin over sending it to a proper lab).
Well that's just it. I don't mean to give the impression that price is the only consideration, although obviously it's a consideration. It's the stab of intuition I get at a VCA or VCA-like vet that the tests they're recommending aren't really necessary and won't really shed much more light on the situation. I've paid out for LOTS of x-rays that later turned out not to be really all that relevant, even for ruling things out (I've got an awful lot of animals, we rescue stray cats and have 3 of our own.)
Are these crappy vets mainly house pet vets? Where I live in CT vets care for livestock as well as house pets and I have never had a problem. The practice I use is a family business where the two main vets are father and son. Prices are not outrageous either.
Price is the consideration for the client so that's the main reason I would only do tests when they were required as it is an extra cost.
At the same time I would prefer to charge appropriately for the time required for a thorough consult but because of intense competition, poor board regulation and poor business acumen, practice managers resort to devaluing Veterinary time resulting in decreased pay to the employee and an overall increase in profit to the business owners in the short term.
This then becomes systemic to the point where you get invited as a Veterinarian not to learn more about medicine and surgery but how to sell more shit to clients.
Are these crappy vets mainly house pet vets? Where I live in CT vets care for livestock as well as house pets and I have never had a problem. The practice I use is a family business where the two main vets are father and son. Prices are not outrageous either.
A father / son practice is almost unheard of in Australia. I had 2 girls in my class who had parents as Vets. One quit after 18 months and went back to University to do Medicine. While the other has a father who is a multimillionaire who owns 8+ clinics, 2 resorts and a sea life park. She's cycled through a bunch of clinics (funnily he won't let her work in his clinics) he even bought her a mobile practice which she ran into the ground.
Most of the large animal Vets are fine except for the bit about paying employees appropriately (they get paid even less then small animal vets in Australia unless they are employed by poultry companies or something similar). None of my classmates still working as Vets in the US are large animal Vets either so I can't give you anything reliable.
Most Vets who start of as Mixed (small and large animal) vets will switch to small animal after a few years and then eventually exit the industry or buy their own clinic.
There's less BS around large animals because the entire herd is the patient and each animal has a dollar price tag so if it is a disease limited to one animal and the cost of treatment outweighs the worth, it is easier to just send it to slaughter or kill it on location.
However I wouldn't rely on mixed or large animal Vets to do any very difficult cases on small animals. Many of my Equine Vet and large animal Vet classmates will ask me or others who were in small animal, how to treat cases, they often send over x-rays, blood and urine results and any pictures of stuff they've seen on microscopy.
As always I seem to be in the middle of two extremes. My family has been going to the same vet office for twenty years or better. They primarily deal with house pets (though I saw someone with a hog one time), they're a big practice, and it's outer city/beginning of suburbs, but of the five or six MD's at least three have familial ties (husband, wife, and son) and the only time a test has been suggested was when we brought the dog in to get a growth on his underbelly removed. They still use a typewriter and physical filing cabinets for patient records. The wait times might be excruciating at times but we trust these people with our pets, especially since we're in on a regular basis to get our dog's skin allergies treated.
As always I seem to be in the middle of two extremes. My family has been going to the same vet office for twenty years or better. They primarily deal with house pets (though I saw someone with a hog one time), they're a big practice, and it's outer city/beginning of suburbs, but of the five or six MD's at least three have familial ties (husband, wife, and son) and the only time a test has been suggested was when we brought the dog in to get a growth on his underbelly removed. They still use a typewriter and physical filing cabinets for patient records. The wait times might be excruciating at times but we trust these people with our pets, especially since we're in on a regular basis to get our dog's skin allergies treated.
I've treated potbelly pigs (they had a popular time in Sydney for a short time where people would walk their mini - pigs around on leashes).
Typewriters still exist?
The last physcially written history practice I worked at was a 1 man branch of the main clinic in a remote place in the UK (Margate).
Husband - Wife is common because the course is so long and the job doesn't allow you to have much social time, you see many Vet-Vet marriages or Vet-Nurse marriages.
Man if I made a client wait 5 - 10 minutes I would get my head blasted off by any boss I've worked under; When in fact it is the managers fault for not assigning appropriate consult times, receptionists double booking without telling me or ignoring that an emergency medical or surgical case had arrived earlier and it required triage priority.
My vet has a practice where you can sign in and then chose to have them call you at home when your turn is imminent. I dunno how many cases down the stack that is, but it usually ends up being about 20 minutes in the waiting room.
Fail for me today: Firefox's latest Nightly build, or as I like to call it, ChromeFox. (Don't worry; it has a pic so you don't have to download it.) Shoot me now.
Thank god I jumped ship a month ago. It'll be fun watching the idiots on MozillaZine moan and bitch; it's no longer my problem.
Comments
The point being that it often just comes down to luck, so don't worry too much about some place not getting back to you. And be sure to prep, prep, prep.
It also doesn't hurt when they realise my English is better than anyone else's on their staff and I wear a suit to the interview, I feel as if they usually don't think there is another option. (Yes it's shameful but it's that easy in the Vet industry to win over an employer).
However recently 99% of my applications are being tossed because I cost too much.
;-)
Then again, when I'm looking for a job I tend to take a shotgun approach, so I've been on interviews I probably never should have agreed to in the first place. This was how I was taught to find a job, back in the day.
The suit is only important in the Veterinary industry because no one bothers to dress well for interviews, maximum at casual or semi-formal clothes. Most Veterinary employers don't know what to do when you approach them professionally (another reason I'm leaving the profession, most think they are in a trade).
When they see my name they assume I'm going to be someone that people can't understand and have a thick Indian accent with broken English.
It's more or less the element of having the person you meet assume the worst and be presented with something above average.
At 36 with a young kid I'm pretty much out of the running now. My school days are over (except maybe something less intense like nursing which I may resume in a few years.)
So, my job interviews mostly consist of tap-dancing and selling my work experience and distracting from my GED and little or no college. Sometimes, I pull it off!
I agree though, it sounds like your "on paper" persona probably filters a lot of the jobs where you'd have gotten a lukewarm reception to begin with, so I guess that hurts and helps you. At least you don't waste your time on lackluster interviews...
If you have anyone even thinking of going to Vet school talk them out of it. If they are hell bent on a healthcare just push them into Medicine or worst case Dentistry.
It is dying a painful death worldwide, obviously more quickly where there are more Veterinarians.
After 1 - 5 years most people change their career from Vet to something else or have bought a practice and are retailing (rather than practising medicine).
New graduates are working for free or as Vet Nurses it is so crowded.
Even Vets in North America have had their salaries dropped by $20 - 30K over the last 6 to 7 years.
The job is so bad I'm 30 and I'm going back to University.
My 2nd last boss had 30 years of experience, didn't mean shit, he still came to me to handle all his medical cases which he couldn't guess. When I first joined so many clients patients had ailments which were being ignored or inappropriately treated. The guy didn't even know how to store drugs or record them, he should have been shut down but the regulatory bodies are too lax and he would change things up to pretend as if he was following the requirements for any audit. He was also using a loophole to pay his nurses less than what they were legally entitled and he tried to do the same to me.
The guy used a crappy free stethoscope, pretend to listen to heart and lung sounds and assume nothing was wrong with each patient, even one of the nurses dogs. Once I started medically managing her dog and it became so much healthier, every nurse had me check over each of their pets even the senior nurse. All of them also bought their own proper stethoscopes after I taught them how to use one.
The boss was so angry when this happened, his face and head turned so pink.
However it's a no win scenario.
She's a minority. Most of the vets are big practices with 6-8 docs and fancy equipment and huge price tags and short exams. A ton of vets are all getting bought up by VCA in Connecticut, a big conglomerate that brings in cutting edge machines and doubles or triples the fee schedule once they get into a place. Happened to my previous local vet.
To be fair a full exam should only take 15 minutes by a competent Vet, this is especially important if it's a busy practice. 30 minutes if you're doing a skin or ear case, usually only get to 45 minutes if I have the time and reason to do an ultrasound during the consult.
Some clinics will extend the period of the consult to help build a relationship with the client.
The clinical exam and history should really tell you all you need to know unless it's a bit more serious and you need to do tests or imaging.
However I know what you mean, a family friend of mine went to 3 different Vets when their puppy had gut pain and were offered x-rays, blood tests, ultrasounds. They finally came to me (at home) and after 5 minutes I worked out it was gas because the daughter had suddenly changed the diet from an all kibble diet to all fresh meat because their neighbour recommended it.
This test thing is another money making scheme designed to increase revenue. It also messes legitimate testing up because clients become suspicious of it and you often get inaccurate results from the in clinic machines that are used (these machines are favoured because of the quick turn around time on results and increased profit margin over sending it to a proper lab).
At the same time I would prefer to charge appropriately for the time required for a thorough consult but because of intense competition, poor board regulation and poor business acumen, practice managers resort to devaluing Veterinary time resulting in decreased pay to the employee and an overall increase in profit to the business owners in the short term.
This then becomes systemic to the point where you get invited as a Veterinarian not to learn more about medicine and surgery but how to sell more shit to clients.
Price is a consideration for the client but not THE consideration. I'd also like my pets to not die, please.
Most of the large animal Vets are fine except for the bit about paying employees appropriately (they get paid even less then small animal vets in Australia unless they are employed by poultry companies or something similar). None of my classmates still working as Vets in the US are large animal Vets either so I can't give you anything reliable.
Most Vets who start of as Mixed (small and large animal) vets will switch to small animal after a few years and then eventually exit the industry or buy their own clinic.
There's less BS around large animals because the entire herd is the patient and each animal has a dollar price tag so if it is a disease limited to one animal and the cost of treatment outweighs the worth, it is easier to just send it to slaughter or kill it on location.
However I wouldn't rely on mixed or large animal Vets to do any very difficult cases on small animals. Many of my Equine Vet and large animal Vet classmates will ask me or others who were in small animal, how to treat cases, they often send over x-rays, blood and urine results and any pictures of stuff they've seen on microscopy.
Typewriters still exist?
The last physcially written history practice I worked at was a 1 man branch of the main clinic in a remote place in the UK (Margate).
Husband - Wife is common because the course is so long and the job doesn't allow you to have much social time, you see many Vet-Vet marriages or Vet-Nurse marriages.
Man if I made a client wait 5 - 10 minutes I would get my head blasted off by any boss I've worked under; When in fact it is the managers fault for not assigning appropriate consult times, receptionists double booking without telling me or ignoring that an emergency medical or surgical case had arrived earlier and it required triage priority.
Thank god I jumped ship a month ago. It'll be fun watching the idiots on MozillaZine moan and bitch; it's no longer my problem.