If you were a tiny man stuck in a blender, how would you get out?
Last month I discussed some of the important big-picture items to keep in mind when going through your farm employee hiring process. This month I am going to delve into the best practices of the five core elements of a hiring practice: marketing, resume review, interviewing, reference checks and offers.

What, you ask, does this have to do with a tiny man in a blender? That question is an example of a terrible interview question, and also a broad mistake almost everyone — farms to large corporations — makes in the hiring process. That mistake is requiring something of an applicant that has no purpose in evaluating the applicant for your job. You would never apply extra fertilizer because “it just feels right” so why would you include a step in your application process unless it has a real and measurable effect on finding the strongest candidate? As you read on, and think about how to modify your application process keep that in mind above all else.

Marketing the job
This is probably the step that makes people feel the most squeamish as it is the only one that requires a direct cost. Before even beginning your marketing I think it is best to assign a line item in your budget to “job marketing.”. Around $200 for a smaller farm should be plenty. When looked at in the grand scheme of things, this is an incredibly small amount of money to spend to find excellent employees. 

Where and how you market will really depend on what your job requirements are. If you are looking for only 100% local labor then you may want to spend the majority of your time designing nice flyers and posting them in places potential interns congregate. Co-ops and college campus ag programs are great places to start.   would strongly recommend getting in touch with any local colleges and seeing if they have email lists for ag students. This can be a great and free way to reach a wider audience.

For most of us, we will be open to hiring people regardless of their current geography, which means we need to find a way to reach those folks. There are many different job boards but the ones I would recommend most are goodfoodjobs.com and attra.ncat.org. Combined, a one-time posting on these two sites would cost you $65. Over the last two years these sites have combined to create around 99% of applicants to my farm. Whether making a job board posting, Facebook post or just handing out a flyer, make sure whatever you put up looks professional and is efficient in its description of your job opportunity. The test of whether it is a good advertisement should always be “would I stop and look at that?” If the honest answer is no, it is time to start over.

If you are posting online, a quick but very useful tip is to refresh your job postings. The longer your posting is on a given website the further down the search results it is going to fall. That means it is less and less likely a potential applicant will click on your posting. The way to remedy this situation is to periodically go back in and edit/repost your job. On Attra I do this about once a month at a cost of $5 — that has ensured that I have stayed on the first page of Wisconsin farms.  As a rule of thumb, if you are not on the first page of results your applications will likely be cut in half; if you are beyond the second page they will come to a screeching halt.  Just remember, your posting is not something you set and forget — it needs to be checked in on a regular basis.

Resume review
When applying to my farm the only item I require before conducting an interview is a resume.  Even if I know ahead of time I am going to interview someone I still require one for several reasons. First, it helps me prepare for the interview; I can read over someone’s experience and get a feel for what I really want to hear more about.  Second, it forces the applicant to show a vague level of interest in working for me before I spend time interviewing him or her.  In my opinion, if someone can’t take the time to either put together a resume, or just email me one, then I am doubtful they are feeling strongly about working for me. 

Before reviewing resumes the most important thing to do is figure out which job requirements are set in stone for you. For example: if someone must have had at least one season on a farm or if someone needs to know how to drive a tractor. The reason it is so important to figure out your “must haves” is because that will allow you to eliminate people from contention early in the process. If someone has to have farming experience to work for you then it is a waste of both your time and the applicant’s to interview them just to eventually turn them down. 

As a side note — try not to be too harsh on applicants for small mistakes in the resume writing process. I have reviewed thousands of resumes and even in the corporate world a solid 50% have glaring—how could you not have seen that??—mistakes.  All too often it is tempting to assume one single point indicates a greater pattern (ex: misspelling a couple of words means someone is terribly disorganized) when in reality it is often little more than an oversight, and certainly not a reason to eliminate a potential applicant from your pool.

Interviewing applicants
Ahh, the interview, the most common and most vexing step in the application process. I would bet that out of all the steps I have outlined here this is the only one that is actually utilized by everyone reading this article. To me, interviews should have three key components: Selling the job, interviewing the candidate, and taking questions. 
For the first part keep in mind that a good interview should be a two-way street. It is a chance for you to evaluate an applicant and for them to evaluate you. Strong candidates will have multiple places they can work so it’s important to take the interview as an opportunity to really sell yourself and your farm as a prime place to work. When going through this part of the interview I like to make sure the candidate knows about my history, my farming experience and what they can expect to do and learn throughout the season.  Remember, you are not the only one in the interview thinking about whether you can get along with this person throughout the entire season.

When designing your interview, the most important part is to have a regular set of consistent and well-thought-out questions. For some reason people are often terrified to actually write out their list of questions when in reality that is the only way to make an interview meaningful.  Google, of all places, actually did a ton of research on this and found that unstructured interviews have no better a chance of picking a strong worker than random chance.
There are a lot of ways to design interview questions but I think by far the best is to ask “behavioral interview questions.” What this means is that instead of asking hypotheticals, you ask for people to cite specific behaviors or situations when answering a question. For example: a non-behavioral question would be: Do you do well with long stressful days? A behavioral version would be: Tell me about a specific time on a farm when you had an especially stressful day. With the first version of the question you are basically telegraphing the answer you want (“why yes, of course I deal well with stress!”) not to mention you will pretty much end up getting the same answer from every applicant. With the second version of the question you are forcing the applicant to prove they have experienced stressful situations and dealt well with them. Later on, when you are deciding whom to hire, comparing the situations different applicants have been in is invaluable. When looking back on the answers also try to remember: not every good farmer is a strong interviewer, and not every good interviewer is a strong farmer. Try to focus on the experience and behavior, not how artfully they are presented.

As another quick note: never, ever ever ask trick questions like the one at the beginning of this article. In my opinion all they serve to do is make the interviewer feel smart and the applicant feel nervous. There is no way an answer to that kind of question would ever correlate to an ability to be responsible or harvest quickly etc.
 
Finally, make sure to leave time for as many questions as the applicant wants to ask. For me, this section of the interview not only helps the applicant learn more, but serves a serious evaluative purpose. If someone is considering working and living with me 24/7 for 7 months and doesn’t have any questions, I have serious concerns. Strong applicants who have actually thought through working for you are going to be curious to learn more about you and your operation. Those who don’t have questions are worth thinking twice about.

Checking references
If interviewing is the most commonly used part of the application process, I am guessing reference checking is the least,  even though it can be of monumental benefit when making hiring decisions. It is always good practice to ask for three references from an applicant. All references are not made equal so make sure you get references from the previous workplaces you are actually interested in learning about (i.e., the landscaping company, not the high school job as a server). When you call up a reference you should treat it just like you do the interview.  Already have questions prepared and be sure to ask for specific behaviors and experience, not just generalities. This is a great time to fact-check both your own impression of a candidate as well as the applicant’s impression of their own abilities. In addition, treat this as a time to “sell” the reference on your farm. Chances are they are someone that is important to the applicant, meaning that if they think highly of you it may help sway your rockstar applicant to work for you.

Making the offer
Finally, when you are ready to make an offer, be sure it reflects the rest of your organized and purposeful process. Be prepared with a start date, pay rate, and any additional responsibilities you might want to offer. Make sure you take this as an opportunity to “sell” the applicant one last time on your job. For me this often means pointing out to the candidate why I specifically chose them, and how I can see them fitting in with my farm. Generally, it is bad practice to make an applicant decide quickly. It makes you sound desperate — which is not usually an attractive quality in an employer. I usually give people 1-2 weeks to think things over and finish up any other interviews they have. When someone decides to work for me I want them to be sure they picked the right farm and situation.

In the end, few people will find it feasible to follow all of the pointers in this article. However, what is most important point is that you have a process you are comfortable with and stay consistent. Attracting, identifying and hiring good talent is more art than science but it takes a concerted and continual effort to improve and perfect.

Ariel Pressman runs Seed to Seed Farm, a 7-acre organic farm located in Clear Lake, Wisconsin. This is his sixth season farming, his third running his own operation. During the offseason he works in various contract recruiter roles, helping companies make strong hiring decisions. Ariel is available for consulting on farm hiring processes.  ou can find out more about his farm at seedtoseedfarm.com.