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South Central MN | I'm a young guy from Minnesota about to graduate from ag college. I have a job with a co-op near home as an applicator/agronomy operations guy. I have a farm in the family. I am hoping to help on the farm and farm a few acres of my own along with working at the co-op so I am fully expecting to bust a#$. I have known lots of very hardworking young people in ag college with ambition and good character. They are out there. They may be scarce, but they still exist. I have known kids who will be taking full time college classes and still hold down a full time job or multiple part time jobs. I have also known lots of young people who are so irresponsible I wouldn't want them near any equipment or customers of mine. I've had a couple cases where I'll ask a classmate if they have a part time job for the school year and they'll say "no, my parents are paying for everything so I don't need to work and I don't want to." It is very disheartening to hear talk like this. I have been fortunate enough to find a part time job for the school year that is directly related to my major. There are a lot of other college kids who work part time there. It is very depressing to hear about the poor quality of work a lot of them do along with endless whining and complaining about their job.
I think those who don't want a job or don't want to work hard at the job they do have is because they don't have to.
One this I noticed when I got done with high school and went to ag college was that a lot of the nice, hardworking farm kids who were active in FFA went to pursue careers outside of ag, no interest in the family farm, etc. This begs the question: if they liked growing up on the farm enough to be active in an ag related organization that promotes and teaches kids all about opportunities in ag, and they still have no interest in ag after high school, what's going on? Almost every ag student I've known in college grew up on a farm or had close family with a farm. But the majority of farm kids I knew growing up are pursuing non ag related careers. Something to think about.
When I look for jobs and internships, the first places I look are career fairs at college (SDSU and Ridgewater College both have good ag career fairs every year) and bulletin boards and other job postings around college. College kids love internships. A lot of ag degrees require they do an internship or two to graduate. Some 2 year colleges give students 4 weeks off of classes during planting and harvest season to do internships or just work (Ridgewater college does this and I think Lake Area Tech might also do this). I paid for a semester's worth of tuition in one harvest season because of this. I would say that's the best way to find new blood. However, I have done internships only to find that I don't want to work for whatever company I was working for, so by no means is it a sure fire way to find full time candidates.
Those are my thoughts. | |
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Hiring help in the Agronomy world
