You have your degree in hand, proud to have completed your ag coursework and degree program. But now, you have to find a good job to pay the bills.

Or, you’ve been farming for years full time, but you or your spouse now need another side job to help pay the bills for your growing family. Where do you start?

If these scenarios fit your mindset right now, you are not alone. The job hunt in the ag industry can be difficult to navigate. Juggling resumes, job interviews and finally scoring that job you really want, and onboarding into the job, can be daunting tasks.

Perhaps before all of that, deciding an agriculture career path and homing in on the jobs or internships you are most qualified to do could be the toughest task of all. How do you sort through the list of jobs out there and decide which ones are right for you?

The Farm Progress podcast — FP Next — powered by John Deere, set out to answer these questions and more in a Deep Dive episode featuring guest Jessie Jarvis — rancher, founder and CEO of Of the West — an agriculture and Western industry job platform based in southern Idaho.

Burning questions

Gleaned from the podcast, here are some of the questions Jarvis answered, giving insights into the Western and ag job market, and offering tips and tricks if you are in the ag job hunt.

Related:FP Next: Beat the ag job hunt

How can job seekers stand out when going for an interview within the ag and Western industries? It either takes passion for the industry or experience in the industry. I’ll get a lot of people saying, “If it’s only people with experience that we are bringing in for these jobs, how are we going to bring in new people?”

I’m absolutely a believer that we need to continue to bring new people into agriculture. But if you are going to work in agriculture, you have to have a passion for it. That’s where you are going to succeed, not just for you but also for the business you are working with as well.

So, how do you stand out? It is really the core values that are part of the ag and Western industries, being someone who is a hard worker, standing by your word, all of those things that we believe in our industries. That is what is missing with the rest of the world.

Those are the values we have, so honestly, it’s easy to stand out in our industry when you are from our industry because those threads are woven within you, and that is what is going to set you up for success.

How do you recommend job candidates manage nervousness when they are going through the interview process seeking a new job? One of the things we see in our industry, often jobs get filled by word of mouth. If you don’t have any connections, how do you get in? One of the reasons we started this job platform is that it makes those jobs easier to find. It goes back to if you are passionate about what you do, and if you are a hard worker. That’s what employers want when they hire people, and that’s who we want to work for are people with those qualities.

As far as nerves, though, I will say that we work a lot with younger generations, encouraging them to come back to agriculture for their careers. So, we work with a lot of people who have had a career for 10 or 15 years, and it is in an industry that is not ag or Western, but that’s what they want to get back to. Maybe it’s because that’s what they do as their hobby. Or they might be somebody who grew up on a farm or ranch, and they believe those are the people they want to continue to work with and get back to.

Let’s say they are a nurse, so on their resume, it doesn’t show that they have this industry experience. But they have a valuable set of experiences. And it basically means just tweaking those things you have done. Think about how you can make those experiences stand out and bring value to our industries.

That’s one of the easiest ways to calm those nerves, because I know for a fact that if you are somebody out there who is looking to change your career path, you have value in your set of experiences, and you just need to tweak them and make them fit for our industry.

How do you narrow your job hunt down to the jobs that you really want? There is so much value in internships. We might think of them in college as a required commitment. But we encourage you to do different internships, whether that is for different companies, or different areas within the industry. It’s the easiest way to test your career for two, three or four months, to see if it is something you will like after graduation.

Does it fill your cup? Not that it might make you a lot of money. If you are only hunting a paycheck, you will be unhappy in the long term. You must work in something you are excited to do every day of the week, and you are excited to get up for. Internships are the absolute best way to figure out what it is that you want to do.

To listen to the entire podcast with Jarvis, and other episodes of FP Next, visit farmprogress.com/program/fp-next.