SURVEY SECTIONS Executive Summary AgCareers Background Applicant Results      Demographic Trends      Employed vs. Unemployed      Male vs. Female      Management vs. Non-Management      Canadian Born vs. Non-Canadian Born Hiring Company Results      Companies Hiring Directly      Recruiting Agencies Recommendations to Management      The Job Description and Specification      The Interview      On the Job      Advancement Opportunities      Other Important Functions      Summary References Appendix A: Job Seeker Survey Appendix B: Hiring Company Survey

AgCareers Background

Farms.com AgCareers, located online at http://www.farms.com/agcareers, currently assists companies with the task of hiring new employees for their organizations. AgCareers allows both recruiters and companies that hire directly to post job openings on the website and allow these companies the option of searching through the candidate database which lists numerous resumes from the top job seekers in agriculture. The revenue model from AgCareers consists of charging companies to post job openings on the website. All job seeker functions of the website are free. AgCareers allows for international job postings and applicants, however the primary target areas of the service are companies within the United States and Canada.

The goal of AgCareers is to have more companies post their own jobs directly to the website. Top companies posting under their own company name enhances the image of the website to both job seekers and other employers, and reflect true current openings within the company. While recruiting agencies are welcome, it is suspected that a large percentage of recruiter positions are in a sense fictional, and only posted to build the recruiters base of candidates to contact for future openings. Monitoring such activity is difficult and is not done by AgCareers at this time.

The purpose of analyzing job seeker, employer and recruiter responses to surveys and interviews is to determine if there are discrepancies in how the hiring companies view the job seekers and vice versa. It is essential that companies are in tune with their employees while they are working within the company, and a logical action by a proactive company is to become fully aware of such employee desires and tailor their corporate culture to meet the changing demands of employees. If this atmosphere can be presented from the beginning, within the hiring process, hiring companies will do a realistic job of setting expectations for what the position will entail. This will result in higher levels of job satisfaction that will lead to less turnover within the company.

Currently, AgCareers emphasizes the job description more in terms of quantity than quality. Hiring company members are encouraged to write more about their company and the job description itself. As well, job specification expansion is encouraged. What AgCareers fails to do is emphasize a thorough analysis of a company's situation to identify strengths and weaknesses within the job posting. While there are certain cases where the company simply has outdated organization practices, most of the time companies are simply omitting key areas that applicants actually do want to see. By helping AgCareers clients find these key areas and promote them within the job description, companies will be in a better situation to attract the top candidates in Agriculture.

By utilizing the survey results presented in the following section, AgCareers can help hiring clients determine best practices when writing a job description for the website. With attention to the specific requirements of job seekers looking for work in today's business world, AgCareers can differentiate itself from competition by becoming experts in more areas of the employee life cycle. Rather than just provide the facilities of a job board AgCareers can become a consultant for more areas in which companies struggle, making the business more valuable and profitable overall.

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