Consider thinking outside of the box when it comes to agriculture recruiting!
As a farm or agriculture business looking to fill a spot on your team, it makes sense that your first thought is to hire someone with agriculture experience. They’re already familiar with the industry, and may even know it like the back of their hand. They’ll be more familiar with the unspoken rules and feel like the safer, less risky pick for the job — especially if your current situation is not able to afford much risk.
However, relevant experience doesn’t always equal a good fit. Neglecting to consider options outside of the ag industry closes you off from innovation and fresh perspectives, and not to mention, further restricting your talent pool.
In this guide, we’ll talk about the benefits of hiring outside of the agriculture industry and how these hires can add value to your team.
1. Hires from Other Industries Bring Fresh Perspectives
When you keep hiring candidates that fit in the same box in regard to job experience and background, you’re going to keep producing the same results.
Are you happy with how things are currently running, or do you think you could do better? If the way that your agribusiness is operating never changed, how would that sit with you?
You should always be striving for continuous quality improvement in everything from your workplace culture to your business’s output. Getting comfortable in your ways and staying there is a dangerous game.
When stepping outside of the ag industry box for your next hire, consider which skills and levels of experience are truly necessary for the job, and which are just convenient for someone to have because they would require less training and time to acclimate.
Aside from the hard skills necessary for the job, a candidate from another industry likely has transferable soft skills that would allow them to learn the job and thrive.
Soft skills that could make up for someone’s lack of specific experience in agriculture include:
- Initiative
- Teamwork
- Communication skills
- Problem solving
- Priority management
These skills are not specific to agriculture and will be found in many other industries. For example, industries such as construction, the military, and logging all contain potential applicants that can thrive in farm work.
A candidate with any of these skills who is willing to learn your trade and apply themselves could prove to be a valuable member of your workforce. But if you close yourself off to candidates outside of the agriculture industry, you might never have the chance to meet them and see what kinds of outside perspectives they can bring to your table. You might be surprised what answers to problems were right in front of you, but just needed an outsider’s help to point out.
2. Sticking With the Safe Option Stifles Positive Change
The most surefire way to make sure that your ag business doesn’t grow is to keep doing things the same. This includes your hiring approach.
Someone with experience exclusively in the agriculture industry might be an expert in using the exact machinery you need and understand how to navigate social circles without much of a learning curve, but they’ll also be set in their ways. This person will be resistant to changing their methods or will at least have a harder time adapting to your preferred way of operating.
When you train someone who is new to the agriculture industry, you are presented with a blank slate. This person won’t have industry fatigue and will be open to your way of thinking. They might have a bit of a learning curve with successfully performing the tasks needed for the job, but once they learn, they’re set.
In that way, you can reframe the question of filling a job opening in terms of whether you are more willing to invest energy and resources in training upfront, or whether you’d rather invest energy and resources over time in re-training someone who was taught their ways somewhere else, in hopes that their ways won’t prove totally incompatible with your practices.
Plus, when you hire a person from another industry, you’ll get a fresh set of eyes that have a history of experiences and insights that are completely unfamiliar to you. There is an entire wealth of knowledge yet to be uncovered!
3. Outside Candidates Help Diversify Your Workforce
A commitment to workforce diversity is a commitment to innovation.
This diversity doesn’t just apply to demographic criteria, although the motivating factor is the same: avoiding cookie-cutter team members that all think and operate the same.
Your dream team isn’t going to get very far if every single person has the same background, qualifications, and ways of thinking. In fact, things will probably get pretty stagnant, pretty fast.
That’s not to say you should hire someone for the role purely because they have outside experience. Each hire should be able to perform baseline responsibilities with reasonable onboarding and training.
However, when you widen your hiring net to include qualified candidates without extensive agriculture experience, you prove that you are not rigid in your ways and are open to new ideas.
Ask yourself whether that is a priority for a successful agribusiness. If it isn’t, what are your priorities? Could these priorities be actualized through collaboration between team members with diverse backgrounds?
What to Look for in a Candidate
Think about your ideal candidate, aside from trainable qualities. What are the skills in a candidate that truly need to be a prerequisite for success in this role?
Sometimes the things that we look for in a candidate are actually just a preference, and not necessary. We would rather not have to train someone in a particular learnable skill, so we put blinders on and only look for someone with very specific experience because it feels like the smarter option for our business.
Look beyond strict background and experience. Each candidate is a whole person, with their own values, belief systems, motivations, and career potential.
- Does this candidate believe in your core mission?
Someone who truly wants your organization to succeed because they believe in the big picture and finds a personal motivation to make it happen can be an invaluable asset to your workforce, even though they don’t have *insert years of experience in said job function*.
- Does this candidate want to learn?
A high drive to learn and do well can make up for a lack of experience in the industry. An eagerness to learn and apply oneself is sometimes the most valuable trait a potential hire could have.
- Does this candidate have transferable skills from another industry?
These skills are in addition to fitting the personality profile and being a good cultural fit, and will still apply even though the explicit job functions are different.
- Can this candidate offer outsider insights that are relevant to your organization?
Maybe they worked in a sister industry that can offer insights into competitor operations or were at a company that performed really well in something you struggle in. There is a chance that industry fatigue is preventing you from seeing answers to problems that aren’t that complicated after all.
How to Find Outside Candidates
So, where do you start when it comes to finding and attracting candidates outside of agriculture?
- Look for industries that have similar values and working environments.
These industries will create people with similar soft skills necessary to adapt quickly to and thrive in your workplace. Advertise in their industry magazines and job boards.
- Look for industries with similar cultures.
These hires are more likely to fit right in and are less likely to be rejected by members of your team who are more resistant to outsiders and change.
- Remove unnecessary experience requirements from the job description.
AgHires recently conducted a Job Seeker Survey of over 700 candidates in the agriculture industry. When asked about job postings, 38% said they would not apply if they didn’t have a qualification that was listed as preferred, but not required.
If a particular experience is actually required, keep it. If it’s more of a preference, and even a strong one at that, leave it out of your job posting so that potential candidates don’t rule themselves out.
- Spruce up those job postings.
When you’re hiring to fill a position, you don’t want to waste hiring resources and time on applications that just don’t fit the bill. Take the time to carefully curate your job postings so that you are attracting the kind of candidate that you actually want to work with, instead of just throwing the post out there and hoping for the best.
Investing this time upfront saves you time and resources down the line in dealing with applicants that you just aren’t interested in, while candidates that would have been a good fit were just never attracted to your job posting to begin with.
- Evaluate your workplace.
You might have to do a little extra work to attract recruits outside of the agriculture industry to join your workforce. Consider your employee perks, company culture, work-life balance, and other factors that would attract (or scare off) people who aren’t familiar with your kind of workplace.
Create an environment that not only keeps your best employees, but tempts people from other industries to leave what they know and join yours.
- Consider professional help.
An ag recruiting company like AgHires can help you attract the right talent for your job openings when you feel stuck or lack the time and resources to properly hire. AgHires is your full-service recruitment partner in agriculture, with a thorough understanding and passion for the industry. Whether you’re looking for on-farm help or an executive leader, we’re ready to help solve your hiring challenges.
Concluding Thoughts
When you are resistant to change, you end up putting yourself in a rigid box, missing out on opportunities for growth. Sticking with the safe option when hiring for your farm or ag business might seem like the smarter choice, but can actually be counterproductive.
Keep in mind that you can expand your talent pool and diversify your team by not only hiring candidates from other industries, but also from more “untraditional” roles. For certain openings within your business, consider hiring freelancers or contract workers, fractional services, or retirees. Your accountant or bookkeeper is a prime example of a team member who doesn’t need to have an ag background to be successful, and who could also be a freelancer. Or maybe your business only needs a fractional CFO rather than a full-time hire.
Breathe fresh air into your business by hiring recruits outside of the agriculture industry. Create an environment that is open to change and adapts well when inevitable change occurs.
Ready to partner with the agriculture recruitment experts to find your next hire? Explore our hiring services or contact us today.
