Vets4Pets Chatham, UK

From humble beginnings in 2011, with a tiny team, we are slightly less humble and tiny today but we aren't large by any means. This enables us to maintain a personal service to our clientele and their pets.

We're a team of four experienced vets, a practice manager, eight RVN's (no SVN's or ACA's) and four gatekeepers on reception.

We've worked hard to carve out a local reputation, and continuing to maintain our care and service to our clients is our main mission.

If we can keep 95% of people happy, 95% of the time and all the while have our team not see Monday morning as a harbinger of doom, facing it with a smile, then that's good enough for us.

Oh no! Another faceless corporate!

Actually, we're not just any Vets4Pets but it's really hard to distinguish one's self from others when looking for great people.

Every Vets4Pets is different, most of them are owned by someone on the ground. In our case, JVP Glenn works day to day as a vet, just like all the others, so there's an understanding of what works and what doesn't.

We've learned a lot about prioritising people - the majority of our day-one staff are still here and (mostly) smiling and sane. To us, it's our team that is our greatest asset, but that's not always easy to express.

We know being a vet is hard work, but it shouldn't be unpleasant, we have shortened our working days (09:00 - 18:00 weekdays, 09:00-14.30 Saturdays, no Sunday clinics, no out-of-hours) and offer a 4 day working week, so some of that fabled 'life outside of work' is available to you.

In work, we're happy to offer support through to certificate level or just simple reinforcement for a good GP - up to you.

We don't need a tea drinker, a cake eater or whatever the current fashion is.

We need someone who has compassion for our patients and their owners, enthusiasm for the work and most of all is 'thoroughly bloody nice' (if that's a thing) so they can be part of an established and (usually!) harmonious team.

You don't have to be cutting edge, but you can if you want, you don't have to be advancing your career with certificates, but you can if you want.

If you want a steady GP job without surgery, we can provide that too.

Do I need to put sense of humour?

It's necessary, but I don't think that anyone could survive more than 6 months being a vet without it, could they?

There are more parents here than not, which means we're all pretty sensitive to the needs of family.

There's always scope for discussion on adapting things for the working parent. We do draw the line at housing your children in the kennels, though. This was tried once and ended in tears...

JVP Glenn is definitely looking a lot greyer than he used to, and apparently doesn't want to do this until he's 80, so there's definitely the future opportunity for someone to buy in / take over should they desire and dependant on future discussion!