Recruitment online has become the standard for agribusiness hiring. AgCareers.com recently asked candidates how they find out about new job opportunities in the Candidate Experience Survey. Here’s what we learned.

Illustrating the power of the internet, the top four sources were all online; topping the list were general online searches, followed by niche job boards, company websites, and national job boards. 

Your farm doesn’t need to have a company career site or even a website to recruit online. Job boards, especially niche job boards targeting talent with agriculture experience like AgCareers.com

Search activity

Ag candidates are becoming more active in their job search. More than 60% of those surveyed searched for jobs weekly or daily. Previous AgCareers.com studies found only 42% searched weekly or daily. Unemployed respondents were significantly more likely to search daily. However, even if employees are satisfied at work with no intention of leaving their job, they are still exploring other opportunities available. Online recruitment has made the job search process easy and accessible to everyone, whether they are actively or passively searching.

Ag candidates said their preferred method to search for applicable positions on an online job site were by career type and job location.

The job posting

Job seekers indicate that job responsibilities are the most important details to be included in a job posting. Location and compensation is becoming increasingly significant for candidates. After the job description, respondents said the next most important information was the job location. Salary/benefit information was important to nearly one-third of respondents.

It has been increasingly popular to list the job location in the job title, such as “Farm Manager – Fort Dodge, Iowa.” Likewise, AgCareers.com finds that job postings with a blank salary field don’t perform as well as those with something in the salary field, either an actual number, salary range, or simply “competitive” or “DOE.”

For assistance with online recruitment, contact [email protected] visit www.AgCareers.com.  

Download a full copy of the AgCareers.com Candidate Experience Survey Results & Analysis here

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.