Veterinary Receptionist

Concord Veterinary Hospital; Strathfield; On-site; AUD 34,000 - 48,000; Part time

Job summary

Concord Veterinary Hospital in Strathfield is seeking a casual receptionist for 2–3 days a week. The role centers on greeting clients, managing payments at the counter, and ensuring a calm, friendly reception for pets and their owners.

Previous veterinary or medical reception experience is helpful, but the team will value someone who can read a room, stay composed under pressure, and provide excellent service to every visitor.

Qualifications

• Veterinary or medical reception experience is great.
• Ability to read a room and stay pleasant with anxious clients.
• A background in hospitality or service is valuable.

Responsibilities

• Greet clients and manage the front desk with warmth.
• Take payments and handle cash at the counter.
• Support admissions and ensure a calm, organized reception.

Skills

Greeting clients

Cash handling

Reading a room

Customer service

De-escalation

Job description

Concord Veterinary Hospital – Strathfield NSW

Sydney Inner West | Casual, 2–3 days a week | Vet experience welcome, hospitality equally welcome

We work in an old bank.

A 1920s Commonwealth Bank, to be exact. The vault is now our radiology room. Which makes it entirely fitting that part of this job involves taking people’s money.

We’ll come back to that. First, the good part.

Our nurses do the admissions. You get the people.

Worth knowing before you read any further: at a lot of clinics, reception quietly doubles as triage, admissions, discharges and half a nursing shift. Not here. Our nurses do admissions and discharges, all of them, and they’re very good at it.

Which leaves you the part the rest of us are quietly jealous of. Greeting people. Knowing the dog’s name before you know the owner’s. Remembering that the tabby in the green carrier hates the waiting room, and steering her somewhere quieter. Treats. Pats. Keeping a busy Friday from turning into a shambles.

And yes, you take the money

We’re not going to pretend that isn’t part of it. Someone has to say the number out loud, and that someone is usually you.

Done badly, it sours an otherwise lovely visit. Done well, it’s a small kindness — clear, calm, no surprises, nobody left feeling awkward at the counter. It is a genuine skill, our team is good at it, and we will teach you.

You don’t need to have worked in a vet clinic

Veterinary or medical reception experience is great, and if you have it you’ll hit the ground running.

But if you’ve ever looked after people for a living — a busy café, a hotel front desk, a restaurant floor, a pharmacy counter — you already have most of what this job takes. You can read a room, hold four things in your head at once, and stay pleasant with someone who’s being slightly unreasonable because their morning has gone badly.

The rest is software, terminology, and learning which dog is allowed which treat. That part we can teach. The first part we can’t.

What you’d be walking into

An experienced reception team. You would not be holding the desk alone, learning on your own, or handed the phone on day one and wished luck.

Clients who are, genuinely, lovely. Is someone occasionally short with you? Yes — the same as anywhere that people are worried and waiting. Usually it’s anxiety about the animal, not about you, and defusing it is part of the craft. Being yelled at is not part of the job here. We’ve turned clients away over it before and we’ll do it again.

And animals all day. Dogs who are thrilled to see you. Cats who are deeply unimpressed. An unreasonable number of kittens, thanks to our work with the Cat Protection Society of NSW.

The part the other ads skip

Some days a family comes in to say goodbye to a dog they’ve had for fifteen years. You’ll be the one who says something kind at the door, and you’ll also be the one who takes the payment afterwards. That’s the hardest two minutes of this job, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t done it.

We won’t pretend that part away, and we won’t leave you alone with it either. It’s also the reason people stay in this work for decades. On balance, it is enormously rewarding.

Hours

• Casual, 2–3 days a week. Tuesdays and Fridays would suit us best. The third day is a conversation.
• 8am to 5pm, occasionally a 7:30am start.
• You get a lunch break. A proper one. Sitting down, away from the phone.
• We close at 5pm. In Sydney. Take a moment with that one.
• You’ll need Australian citizenship, permanent residency, or a visa with the right to work.

Pay

The award exists. We can’t remember the last time anyone here was actually paid it.

Beyond that, we’re not going to print a number we’d only have to wriggle out of later, because what you’re worth depends on what you walk in with. So let’s talk about it properly when we meet. We’ll be straight with you, and we’d like you to be straight with us about what you’re on now and what you’re after.

Concord Veterinary Hospital — Sydney Inner West
www.concordvets.com.au