Director of Talent Acquisition

Role: Director of Recruiting — Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM)

Hours: Full-Time / Exempt

Location: Remote / Hybrid Travel: Up to 30% — partner hospitals, conferences & events

Reporting to: Chief People Officer (CPO)

Company Description:

Veterinary Practice Partners (VPP) is a nationwide veterinary community revolutionizing vet practice ownership and support. With an expansive network of doctor partners and co-owned animal hospitals and clinics nationwide, VPP has become an established partner of choice. Through its co-ownership model, VPP provides operational support across learning and development, HR, recruiting, marketing, technology, and finance, enabling veterinariansto focus on providing high-quality patient care and foster a strong culture at their individual practices. VPP has over 190 (and counting) partner hospitals with 4,000+ employees and continued growth. VPP is a dynamic, profitable, growth company with strong financial private equity backing. For more information on Veterinary Practice Partners, visit www.vetpracticepartners.com.

Team Snapshot

Direct reports include: 4 DVM Recruiters | 3 Recruiting Support Specialists | 3 Recruiting Support Staff

Summary:

Veterinary Practice Partners (VPP) is one of the fastest-growing veterinary services organizations in the country, built on a true partnership model that keeps clinical autonomy in the hands of the doctors who practice it. As our Director of Recruiting — DVM, you will architect and lead the strategy that brings exceptional Doctors of Veterinary Medicine into the VPP community—and you will do it with your hands in the work alongside your team.

This is a player-coach role. You are not setting strategy from the sidelines — you carry your own recruitment load, own DVM candidate relationships, and step in wherever the team needs you. You lead by example, doing the work at the highest level while developing others to do the same.

This is not a traditional recruiting director role. We are looking for someone technologically fluent, AIforward, deeply data-driven, and genuinely passionate about veterinary medicine as a profession. Reporting directly to the Chief People Officer, this role sits at the intersection of talent strategy and hands-on execution.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define, own, and continuously evolve VPP’s DVM talent acquisition strategy in alignment with enterprise growth goals and hospital-level hiring plans.
• Serve as the organizational thought leader on veterinary recruiting — staying ahead of market shifts, workforce trends, and competitive landscape changes.
• Partner closely with the Chief People Officer, Operations leadership, and hospital partners to forecast hiring needs and translate them into executable recruiting roadmaps.
• Champion an employer brand narrative that resonates authentically with today’s DVM candidates — from new graduates to seasoned specialists.

AI & Technology — Unleashing the Human Side of Recruiting

• Champion AI and automation as tools that eliminate manual, administrative work — so every recruiter can spend more time building genuine relationships with DVM candidates.
• Identify and implement technology solutions that automate scheduling, data entry, routine outreach sequences, and administrative follow-up.
• Set the standard: at VPP, AI handles the logistics so our recruiters handle the relationships.
• Leverage recruiting analytics and pipeline data to help recruiters focus their energy on the right candidates at the right stage.
• Stay current on emerging HR tech, ATS capabilities, and AI-assisted sourcing tools.
• Establish guidelines for responsible, transparent AI use — ensuring every tool we adopt reflects VPP’s values of integrity, fairness, and authentic partnership.

Player-Coach: Personal Recruiting Load & Team Coverage

• Carry a personal portfolio of actively sourcing, engaging, and closing candidates as a full-cycle recruiter, not just as an observer.
• Model elite recruiting behavior for the team: demonstrate how to prospect a cold candidate, build rapport over time, navigate a complex offer conversation, and close a DVM who has multiple options.
• Step in to support team members on high-priority or high-volume roles as needed — no role is beneath this leader.
• Balance the demands of leading a high-performing team with staying connected to the craft.

Full-Cycle Recruiting with a Deep Emphasis on Sourcing

• Own true full-cycle recruiting: strategy, sourcing, outreach, screening, interview coordination, offer management, and candidate experience through Day 1.
• Treat proactive sourcing as the most critical phase of the recruiting process. DVMs are rarely actively looking — this team wins by building relationships before roles open.
• Develop and maintain a robust pipeline of DVM talent across career stages and geographies relevant to VPP’s growth markets.
• Build sourcing strategies that leverage veterinary school relationships, alumni networks, professional associations, conference presence, and referral programs.
• Coach the recruiting team on advanced sourcing techniques, competitive mapping, and passive candidate engagement.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of DVM Recruiters, Recruiting Support Specialists, and Recruiting Support Staff.
• Set clear performance expectations and KPIs; conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations.

Metrics, Reporting & Continuous Improvement

• Own the recruiting analytics dashboard — tracking KPIs including time-to-fill, time-to-offer, offer acceptance rate, source-of-hire, pipeline conversion, and quality of hire.
• Present monthly and quarterly recruiting performance data to senior leadership with actionable insights.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement through structured post-hire reviews and candidate experience surveys.
• Establish SLAs for each stage of the hiring process and hold the team accountable to them.

Candidate Experience & Relationship Management

• Model and enforce a white-glove, service-oriented candidate experience at every touchpoint — from first contact to Day 1.
• Build and maintain a proactive talent pipeline through conferences, veterinary schools, professional associations, and referral networks.
• Represent VPP at veterinary conferences, career fairs, and events.
• Act as a trusted advisor to hiring managers and hospital partners on candidate selection, compensation benchmarking, and offer strategy.

Qualifications:

Required

• 7+ years of full-cycle talent acquisition experience, with at least 3 years in a director or senior manager capacity leading a recruiting team.
• Demonstrated experience recruiting Doctors of Veterinary Medicine (DVM), physicians, or other licensed healthcare professionals.
• Comfort and enthusiasm for a player-coach model — this leader actively recruits alongside their team.
• Elite sourcing skills: proven ability to build pipelines of passive candidates through proactive outreach and multi-channel sourcing strategies.
• Proven track record managing and developing a team of 6–12 recruiters and support staff.
• Exceptional data literacy — comfortable building reports, interpreting analytics, and making evidence-based decisions.
• Hands-on experience with ATS, CRM platforms, and modern HR technology stacks.
• Clear philosophy on AI as a relationship enabler — experience using automation to remove administrative burden.
• Strong service orientation — this leader understands recruiting as a business-critical, relationshipfirst function.
• Resilient and adaptable — comfortable leading through ambiguity in a fast-scaling, high-growth environment.

Preferred

• Experience recruiting DVMs or veterinary specialists in a multi-site or veterinary services organization.
• Familiarity with veterinary medicine as a profession — compensation norms, career pathways, specialty credentialing, and clinical practice structures.
• Experience building or scaling a DVM-specific recruiting function from the ground up.
• Background in executive search or retained veterinary physician search.
• Advanced knowledge of AI tools specific to talent acquisition, including prompt engineering, AI copilots, or process automation.

Leadership Profile — The VPP Standard

We are looking for a leader, not just a manager. The ideal Director of Recruiting embodies the following:

Innovative: You don’t wait for best practices to arrive — you create them. You actively seek new tools, processes, and approaches that give VPP a competitive edge.

Forward-Thinking: You see trends before they land. You anticipate where veterinary talent markets, technology, and candidate expectations are heading.

Growth-Minded: You approach decisions with curiosity rather than conviction. You listen actively and update your views when the evidence calls for it.

Resilient: High-growth is high-pressure. You navigate setbacks and competing priorities with composure and a solutions-first mindset.

Flexible: You adapt quickly when circumstances change — and you help your team do the same.

Service-Oriented: You treat every candidate, hospital partner, and internal stakeholder as a customer worth delighting.

Metric-Driven: You love the data and live by it. You set clear goals, track the right indicators, and use performance insights to improve.