Staffing Tip #2: 'Previous Experience Working with Animals Required'

When you advertise your jobs, make sure to put 'previous experience working with animals required'. Working with animals is very different to living with animals, or growing up with a family dog. You need staff that can walk in to the daycare & exhibit the right energy & attitude from the get-go. Make sure you sort through the resumes you receive and only take people seriously if they have a) worked with pack animals before (not necessarily dogs) or b) studied animal behaviour or canine psychology papers. Owning a dog and taking it to puppy training by no means qualifies someone to work with animals. You can be sure that more than half of your applicants will still not have had any experience working with animals, but at least it may discourage some people from applying and reduce your work load.

Once I had a very nice guy show up pulling a crumpled up, wet resume out of his pocket while opening his wallet at the same time to show me a photo of his beautiful Staffordshire. When I asked where his dog was he told me he had left it on the other side of Canada while he went traveling & was missing the animal contact, had seen my ad and thought he'd be a shoo-in. He had been a delivery driver prior to this point & was now applying to be the Manager of a very high-end dog daycare!