A vet student four weeks from boards says practices are asking the wrong hiring question

Sue Vũ, a final-year veterinary student at the Ontario Veterinary College, wrote an open letter four weeks before her NAVLE exam, naming what she and her classmates are afraid to say out loud. "The generation of vets you're about to hire is scared, and that fear is splitting us in two directions," Vũ wrote in her column in Today's Veterinary Business.

The question practices are asking as hiring gets harder

Owner-DVMs are asking whether new graduates still want to work, or whether the profession has produced a cohort that expects easier hours and lower caseloads than the job allows. Vũ's answer is that both groups want to work, but they define stability differently, and practices that hire based on how ambitious someone seems in an interview are taking a risk they may not see until the associate leaves.

Some new grads "are chasing rotating internships and residencies, trading a year or more of brutal hours and lower-than-average pay for a shot at specializing later," Vũ writes. Some want surgery, oncology, internal medicine at a referral clinic, or the complexity of an emergency floor. "Some just want the internship because they're afraid of what skipping it might mean for their competency," according to Vũ.

Others, and Vũ counts herself here, want to be general practice veterinarians in the city where they already live, with an eight-hour day, a guaranteed lunch break, and enough time left to call family, eat a good meal, and decompress before bed. She writes that knowing this is less glamorous than what she used to want makes her feel ashamed, as if she has let down her past self. "The younger version of me would have scoffed at how much I now prefer a full day of wellness exams over a triple emergency," Vũ writes.

The split both groups share

Vũ writes that classmates trade rumors about how much harder it has gotten to land a job, and how last year's class did not start getting hired until closer to graduation. Part of them hopes this is not true, she writes, "so we put it on the back burner and drive ourselves forward, either toward career security or sustainability." She writes that both directions are ways of responding to the same underlying anxiety, a job market that no longer feels predictable.

"The new grad asking for a slower life and the one chasing a residency are equally driven," Vũ writes, "just toward different definitions of stability."

What practices miss when they hire for eagerness

Vũ writes that "if you're still hiring based on how ambitious and driven someone seems, you're taking a risk." She describes two candidates. "The candidate who says yes to every emergency on her day off, who never asks a question that might slow her down" might become the specialist she always dreamed of, Vũ writes. She might also burn out within "months so consumed with perfecting the medicine that, eventually, her passion burns out," according to Vũ.

"Your other candidate wants steady hours. She keeps her days off for the people who love her and the hobbies that recharge her," Vũ writes. Practices "might see that as less driven, not worth the extra effort of mentoring," according to Vũ. "What you might be missing is a doctor who already knows how to separate her worth from her production, which is what sustains people in this profession for decades," Vũ writes.

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The fear new grads will not name in an interview

Vũ writes that "what scares me more than the current job market is being misunderstood. Not wanting an internship doesn't mean I don't want to learn." Wanting a stable schedule does not mean she has stopped caring about getting better, she writes. Wanting less is not the same as wanting easy.

She writes that she "already knew the exhilaration of an ER floor with three hard cases running at once. What I'm starting to realize now is that not every meaningful day has to leave my heart racing and my mind numb." According to Vũ, "satisfaction also comes from educating a first-time rabbit owner or truly listening to a client worried about her dog's itchy ears."

Our read

Vũ's letter names the gap between what vet school teaches and what solo practice demands, and we'd argue it is not a clinical gap. A new grad four weeks from boards can probably win a bar quiz on endocrine emergencies in dogs and cats, as Vũ writes, but what she cannot do yet is triage a full schedule, handle an angry client alone, or ask for help without feeling like she is admitting incompetence. That is the gap practices are hiring into, whether they know it or not.

We're hearing the same question from owner-DVMs: is this cohort less willing to work, or are they asking for something the practice cannot give? Vũ's answer is that both the intern-chaser and the associate who wants an eight-hour day are responding to the same fear, a job market that no longer feels predictable, and practices that hire based on how eager someone sounds in an interview are betting that eagerness alone will carry them through the first year. That bet does not always pay.

If you are hiring new grads without building in real onboarding time and clinical supervision, you are selecting for the candidate who will not ask for it, and that candidate may not be the one who stays. If you are two years out and still feel like you are faking it, Vũ's letter names what you need and gives you language to ask for it without sounding weak.

Vũ's advice to practices interviewing new grads: skip the "Where do you see yourself in five years?" question. Instead, ask what they are afraid of. Ask what gets them through the bad days. Then sit with them while they figure out how to answer those questions. That is how you will find out who is going to stay.

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