Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Finding or recruiting employees
Prospective employees can be secured from many sources. The qualifi cations for the job, its
wage or salary, the kind and size of organization and the location of the agribusiness will all
play an important role in locating new employees. Just as with customers, there may be no
better recommendation for the HR program of a fi rm than to have current employees tell their
friends, “This is a good place to work.” Many well-managed fi rms have long lists of people
who want to work for them because of present employees' satisfaction with their jobs.
If some present employees see the available position as a promotion, those employees
may be good prospects for the job, assuming that they are qualifi ed. If the job requires spe-
cial training or education, school or university placement services or counselors can provide
help in fi nding recruits. Private employment agencies and government employment services
can often help locate the applicant needed. The wise manager is always alert to the existence
of top-notch people in competitors' fi rms or others who may be interested in a change of
jobs. In today's economy, many positions are posted online and some fi rms purchase access
to online resume databases. Advertising in newspapers is effective for hourly jobs and trade
journal postings can be useful for niche-type careers (commodity buyers, livestock nutrition-
ists, plant breeders, etc.).
Selecting the right person
Each of the available applicants should be screened against both the job specifi cations and
the job description for that particular job (
Tables 17.1
and
17.2
). First, the job applicant
should be compared to the job specifi cations. A good job application should elicit informa-
tion on personal history, education and special skills, experience, personal references, and
previous employment—all consistent with the background and skill set required for the posi-
tion (
Table 17.3
).
Human resource managers also have to be very careful not to seek information that the
applicant does not legally have to provide. Care must be taken in designing the application
so that it does not violate the Civil Rights Acts, which make it illegal to discriminate against
any person on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, age, or national origin. Seeking infor-
mation like marital status, fi nancial position, number of children, and age can get a fi rm into
a lot of trouble if the fi rm uses the information in some discriminatory way. And a fi rm that
is audited for civil rights violations will be glad it has designed a set of job specifi cations for
each job. If these are carefully designed to represent those factors needed to perform the job
successfully, and if the person interviewing the applicants has fi lled them out honestly, the
fi rm will be in a stronger position to defend its hiring practices.
The job application can be simple, but it should provide the applicant with a chance to
present qualifi cations in an organized and fair manner. The task of managing the process for
fi nding and screening applicants should fall to the person(s) responsible for the HR function.
There are several reasons for this: (1) the person doing the screening interview develops
skills through experience; hence that person is the most qualifi ed for the task; (2) there is
consistency in interviewing when one person handles all screening interviews; and (3) when
a HR specialist handles this function, others are not interrupted in their tasks. Note that for
many positions, the HR specialist may well involve a number of others in the full hiring
process—the supervisor, coworkers, staff specialists, etc. But even here, the HR specialist
will likely manage or lead the process to insure that the best possible person is hired and that
all legal requirements are met.
