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Recruiting good employees

An extension educator says hiring new farm employees starts with good recruiting.

Stan Moore with Michigan State University Extension tells Brownfield farms need to be transparent with job descriptions and upfront about expectations for open positions.

“The worst thing you want to do is assume that people don’t want to do this particular job or that particular job and so you don’t spell it out, when in reality you want a good fit for that position.”

He says employers also shouldn’t dismiss potential employees without farm experience. “Sometimes your best employees will be ones that haven’t had previous farm because you do what them to learn how do the job on your farm the way you would like it done and not to bring maybe some past experiences that really don’t fit.”

Moore says the most common way farms find new employees is through word-of-mouth. “That can be really good especially if we do somethings to make that even more effective.”  He says, “We can do things like preparing an email that employees that can forward on to other perspective employees, they can work with employees to engage them in the practice of actually hiring new employees.”

Moore tells Brownfield current employees can be involved with writing job descriptions, interviewing or may even receive incentives for recruiting good employees. “If an employee helps to recruit another employee onto the farm and that employee stays for let’s say three months or at least six months, then they would get some kind of bonus added to their paycheck.”

He recommends creating an interview to learn about a potential farm employee’s work ethic and ability to meet job requirements.  A full list of hiring tips can be found in MSU’s Ag Employee Checklist.

AUDIO: Interview with Stan Moore