8 Ways To Hire Good Help
Guidelines for finding and keeping wage-worthy employees for your farm.
“Employers today are struggling to find the right people,” says Gary Maas, president of AGRIcareers, Inc. “It’s hard to find employees who have the skills and competencies for the job, the values and behaviors that promote job satisfaction and the attitudes that motivate them to excel.”
Maas questions, how can you spend an afternoon with someone and know if you would like to work with him or her for years?The cost of hiring an unqualified person may far exceed the time requirements of finding out if the person is right for the job. Experts say the risk of hiring a bad worker can be minimized with a sound selection process and deliberate employee management system and by following a few guidelines.
1.) Know what you need. Take time to evaluate the credentials of prospective employees says Melvin Brees, farm management specialist at the University of Missouri.
Understand the job, and you’ll understand the best possible person to fill it. There are skills, licenses, personality traits and abilities that an employee must have to be successful and employers should take no skills for granted.
Create a job description that details the tasks of the position and establishes specifications and requirements needed to do the job. Also, remember that a job description should evolve with the business, position and employee.
The best way to recruit skilled new employees is to make your business the kind of place where talented and hard-working people feel appreciated and valued, Maas says. Being a great employer makes it easier to retain quality people and develop a reputation of being the employer of choice.
Recruitment channels can include government agencies, schools/universities/colleges, want ads, private agencies and through increasingly popular Web sites. Concentrated recruitment efforts are much more effective in the long run than a shotgun approach where efforts are scattered and include random groups of people.
2) Evaluate the applicants. A complex position will require a multi-dimensional evaluation to determine if an applicant has all the necessary skills. Ask questions pertaining to specific farm-related situations and see how the person responds.
“It’s best if an employer can use his own application form to equally compare all candidates while getting information relative to the needs of the position,” Mass says. “Make sure you compare apples-to-apples so that every applicant has the same start.”
Written tests are good to gather general information and are an excellent tool when technical knowledge is required, while oral tests may help assess the applicant’s communication ability and technical expertise. Individual interviews allow potential employers and employees to get to know each other. However, some applicants may sound very impressive during an interview and disappoint once on the job, or be nervous in an interview and miss their opportunity to shine.
A practical test is useful because it requires the applicant to perform one or more of the skills the job requires, Maas says. These tests also demonstrate the applicants’ thought process—did they ask questions, prioritize tasks and keep their composure if something went wrong?
Require the applicant to provide the names and phone numbers of past employers. While keeping in mind people have different perceptions and personalities, Maas recommends looking for patterns with previous employers.
If the new employee will be working with current employees or family members, include them in the evaluation process. Also, remember that evaluation goes both ways, you may not get a great employee if you don’t put your best foot forward, too.
3) Be the boss you would want to work for. Ask yourself the question, “Would you like working for you?” No one ever said that employee management would be easy, but it doesn’t have to be difficult.
Employee surveys have shown that the most important thing to employees is working for someone they trust and having a boss that looks out for them,” Maas says.
