Skilled agricultural search firms are an agribusiness owner’s best friend. Whether you own a small family farm or run a multi-million dollar enterprise, the need for skilled staff is essential to the success of your business. Agricultural headhunters can supply you with pre-qualified talent for any area of specialization.

Discuss your staffing needs with several agriculture industry recruiters before making any service selections. Different agencies can have vastly different networks, rates and areas of expertise. Be prepared to discuss your situation at length when you speak to a recruiter.

Before you outsource recruiting for agriculture jobs, consider the following:

1. What budget am I willing to devote to staff recruitment?

2. Am I looking for seasonal staff, or hiring for long term placement?

3. Have I listed on paper the exact job descriptions, educational and skill requirements and personality preferences for the staff I intend to hire? Recruiters will ask -- don’t rely on memory.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Use agricultural recruiting companies for chemical staffing solutions

Agricultural chemicals are a hot commodity, and so are search firms geared toward recruiting agriculture professionals in the field. Whether you're looking for crop dusters, R&D professionals or someone to head up your supply chain, an aggressive recruiting firm can provide the talent you need to get the job done.

I recommend: Place a job with Shella Associates when searching for entry level, blue collar or executive agricultural chemical staffing solutions. Request a quote from Validant Consulting, a multi-service agriculture recruiting service that specializes in FDA assistance.

Choose agriculture recruiting firms to supply agronomy experts at any level

Whether you're looking for feed, seed, equipment or livestock experts, agribusiness recruiters are a multi-purpose staffing solution.

I recommend: Email Miller and Associates, multi-purpose agribusiness recruiters. Their services span blue and white collar positions in feed, petroleum, animal health, seed, equipment and more. You can also submit an open position to New Century Ag Recruiters, a proven leader in agriculture recruiting services. Whether you’re looking for farmhands or 6-figure talent, New Century can help.

Fill executive agricultural jobs using recruiters as staffing solutions

Agriculture recruiters specializing in executive placement offer an extremely valuable service. Qualified executives are often difficult to acquire in agribusiness, as they tend to stay devoted to job placement --often within a family owned venture -- for long periods of time. A skilled recruiter's networking ability and powers of persuasion can go a long way toward bringing top managerial talent to your firm.

I recommend: Contact AgriCareers, Inc., for executive and blue collar staffing solution by 30 year veterans among agricultural search firms. Need interim white collar staffing? Exec-appointments.com is a global provider of temporary executives in agriculture and other industries.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Weigh your options carefully before choosing between contingency and retained searches. Agriculture recruiters operating on contingency only charge if they arrange a successful placement. However, they rarely travel and tend to work on dozens of searches at a time. Retained service providers require a fee regardless of placement, but will focus almost exclusively on your needs and travel extensively to find qualified candidates. Every day your positions remain open, you lose productivity, and therefore revenue. As a general rule, blue collar searches are successful on contingency, while searches for white collar and highly skilled equipment operators justify the retainer fee.