Application Journeys

What actually happens between a veterinary professional first seeing your job ad and submitting an application. It’s not instant response, not linear, not a few days. It’s never a straight line. And nobody has measured the journey. Until now.

Consumer marketers have long understood that it takes 8 to 10 “touches” to move someone from suspect to prospect to buyer. A “touch” is any point of memorable contact: a social media post, a newsletter feature, a TV ad, a conversation with a friend who also bought that new toaster you are thinking about getting. Veterinary recruitment is no different. It takes 8 to 10 “touches” to move a veterinary professional from suspect to candidate to applicant. The question is: how do those touches actually play out in the real world, over real weeks, for real people with real lives getting in the way?

We wanted to understand what actually goes on during the candidate consideration phase. So we spoke to 103 veterinary professionals across the USA, UK, and Australia about their most recent job application experience. What follows is what we found…

About Applicant Journeys

Sarah needed eight touches over seven weeks. Emily on a similar path, took ten touches, starting two weeks later.

That’s the reality. Not a theory. Not a guess. This is how veterinary professionals actually move from first seeing an opportunity to actually applying.

We researched, interviewed and assembled the journeys of 103 veterinary professionals through their application process to build these scenarios. The names have been changed, the details are composites, but the patterns are consistent: the weeks of quiet consideration, the life interruptions, the return visits, the slow build of familiarity and trust before they are ready to act.

There’s also a third journey. The one that doesn’t end in an application. The veterinarian who saw your ad, clicked through twice, mentioned it to a colleague, started thinking about updating their CV…and then had a good month at work. Got a pay review. Decided to stay with the team she knows. That journey is just as common.

This means that at any time, several people are mid-journey, weighing it up in 10-minute windows between consults, mentioning it to their partners over dinner, checking your Google reviews at 11pm on a Tuesday. (Which is why we share progress details in our monthly report – you can see a Sample Report here).

The profession’s characteristics make the application window longer than in most industries, and even more so today. Veterinary professionals do tend to be introverted, time-poor, emotionally invested in their current team and patients, and risk-averse about change. The act of writing a CV and putting themselves forward is genuinely draining for people who chose a career caring for animals, not selling themselves.

None of this has been measured before, and now you have a better understanding of what goes on “out there.” Now you have the scenarios, and you have that data, to decide about how long to run a recruitment campaign, how many channels to use, and how to measure progress. And as Sarah and Emily’s journeys show, the road to an application can take a lot of turns.

Methodology: 103 veterinary professionals across the USA, UK, and Australia were interviewed about their most recent job application experience, including timeline, touchpoints, decision factors, and points where they stalled or changed direction. Dr. Sarah and Dr. Emily are composite personas representing the most common patterns observed. Consumer marketing research indicates 8 to 10 touches are needed to move someone from suspect to prospect to buyer. Our research confirms that veterinary recruitment follows the same pattern: it takes 8 to 10 touches to move a veterinary professional from suspect to candidate to applicant.

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