Need help with recruiting staff?

Helpful tips and resources to help you attract and retain good employees

 

Recruitment Planning and Selection

The first step in this process is having a good understanding of the role requirements.

  • What on farm tasks should the role include?
  • What qualifications or skills are necessary to fill this gap?
  • What is your budget?

Once you have a clear idea of what you need, you can then start advertising for the role. This is your chance to ‘sell’ yourself as a great employer. A good job advert will attract good candidates.

You'll find some good advice and resources on how to advertise your role. You'll also find some job description templates to help write your job advert.

It's also always a good idea to understand what the pay rate* is for the role you are advertising for.

Want to list a job now?

Advertise a new role

 

* Careers.govt.nz provides pay information as a guide for people considering entering or training for a job, not for employers or contractors to use to set pay rates. People's individual pay rates may vary according to their skills, experience, qualifications and employer.

 

Phone Screening Applicants

In order to create a short-list of candidates (recommendation of 3 – 5 candidates) a phone interview should be conducted. It’s important to take the time to do this now so you’ll save time later by only interviewing the best candidates.

Here are more tips on screening applicants over the phone, including a phone screening questionnaire.

When you have your short-list, you can now start in-person interviews (or given the current climate, perhaps an online video interview).

Here's a handy checklist for what you need to do before, during and after an interview, including other useful resources to help you with the interview process. There are also several templates with suggested questions for difference roles on a farm.

 

Job Offers

You’ve selected your preferred candidate and it’s time to make them an offer.

You'll now need:

There are obligations that your have an employer which you can read about here.

 

The Co-operative Difference - People & Community Achievement

We need to have great workplaces that attract, motivate, and retain the very best people and enable everyone to thrive. With a high quality and happy workforce you can reap the rewards of the good times and help each other during the tough ones, with an engaged workforce helping us all to develop the next generation of dairy farmers for the industry. The People & Community achievement focuses on enhancing the industry's reputation whilst contributing to strong and healthy communities. Find out more here.

 

Health & Wellbeing

A good work/life balance, and the ability to make strong personal connections in communities can help improve wellness and wellbeing - and attract and keep the people we need in our industry and rural communities. 

Check out the Farm Source Health and Wellbeing Portal and find advice and resources to improve your wellbeing. These have been tailored especially for our farmers in New Zealand. 

 

Stay Cyber Safe

Employers are being targeted with fraudulent online activities. These are on the rise and scammers keep coming up with more creative ways to take advantage of people's good nature and / or sense of fear. We have seen a significant increase in scams like phishing emails and the spread of misinformation. Here are our top tips to help you and your family remain cyber safe.

 

More Information

The content and resources that you can find on this page have been supplied by DairyNZ. Check out their website for more information which has been tailored to the NZ Dairy Industry.