Hiring in an unexpectedly exclusive industry—American farms

What if your industry was struggling to retain and recruit talent, but the usual tips and tricks for upping recruitment numbers, like broadening your talent pool or leaning on AI and automation, rarely resulted in quality hires?

Welcome to the world of agricultural HR, an industry that Kristi Pritchett, senior human resources partner at Miller Chemical and Fertilizer, made sound more exclusive than most New York nightclubs.

Pritchett said that in prior HR roles outside of ag, she often scanned résumés for transferable skills, believing that the ability to learn could swap in for industry experience. But when she joined Huber’s team in Hanover, Pennsylvania, Pritchett quickly realized that no one casually sauntered into a career in ag. She put it bluntly: “If you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to farming, [customers] do not want you on their property.”

Such knowledge, she said, is difficult to fake. Agricultural employees, from research and development teams to sales professionals, need to know the biology of the industry, including plant life cycles and soil science, as well as the politics of navigating what Pritchett called a “very tight-knit community.” Unless candidates studied agriculture in school or grew up on farms, she said, even the brightest potential hires might struggle to succeed.

As a result, looking for such talent can feel—excuse the pun—like trying to find a needle in a haystack. What’s worse, competitors are often looking for the exact same needle. In 2022, nearly three-quarters of the 80 agricultural businesses surveyed by the Agribusiness HR Review reported their top HR concern was competing for talent. Further complicating the picture, Pritchett said, is the frequent use of non-compete agreements in agriculture, which keep top talent out of reach for a set number of years.

Like other industries, agriculture needs to find a way to hire. They are replacing employees lost to turnover—64% of respondents reported turnover rates above 10% in the past year, with nearly 24% reporting turnover rates above 20% (a bit higher than 2020’s figures, when 58% of respondents reported more than 10% turnover). They’re also often trying to expand their total headcount.

It isn’t easy. On average, respondents to the Agribusiness HR Review said that it takes between four and eight weeks to fill a sales or middle management position and longer for an executive, in part because they report a low number of applicants (67.5%) and a lack of qualified applicants (46.3%)

HR Brew sat down with Pritchett to discuss how she approaches talent management in an industry where HR professionals can’t afford to let quality talent go.

Back to basics. Pritchett relies on networking to vet candidates—but that doesn’t typically involve stalking a candidate’s LinkedIn profile. In rural areas, many workers don’t have social media profiles or even formal résumés, Pritchett said, but they’re bound to know someone in the ag community from experience at trade shows or prior companies.

Her first step in finding candidates is to seek employee referrals. If someone applies directly, she always asks them to provide a list of who they work with in the industry.

“Relationships are huge in agriculture. If [customers] don’t know you or your family or where you came from a lot of times, they’re very much, ‘Don’t come to me,’” Pritchett said, explaining why it’s so important to find candidates who are already steeped in the community. Without such networks in place, she said, it can take a new hire six months or a year to build enough rapport with farmers to even be allowed on-site.

Hold onto hires. When Pritchett lands a new hire, she wants to keep them. Like the majority of the industry, her company uses spot bonuses to recognize employee contributions. These monetary incentives are great, she said, because there isn’t always room for promotions: some of the leadership team has stayed with the company for 40 years, so there aren’t always open roles for high performers to move into.

The future. The horizon for agriculture contains new challenges. Pritchett, for one, described her company’s struggle to stay agile as climate change throws supply and demand curveballs (hurricanes destroy crops, droughts remove needs for certain fungicides). If the industry is to continue to thrive, some think that the insiders-only approach to hiring may be shortsighted.

“Individuals with a fresh perspective on agriculture…bring awareness to our blind spots in ways those of us born into the industry simply cannot see,” Miriam Hoffman, wrote for Farm Bureau. “We can’t limit our talent and idea pool because of a misplaced belief that we’re better because we were here first.”—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.