8 Tips for Hiring Better Farm Employees (FSFS216)



Today’s episode is all about hiring. 

Jeremy Tolley, farmer at Red Thread Farms and HR Specialist in the healthcare industry gives us eight tips he learned during his 20 years in the HR industry—all to help us hire the best fit possible for our business. 


8 Tips about Hiring with Jeremy Tolley 

1. Begin with the end in mind. (3:35)

You’d be surprised how many managers and business owners go into a hiring decision who just think, “hey, I need a body.”

Beginning with the end in mind
is all about thinking, “what is it that you want this person to accomplish? What does success look like?” It’s avoiding the shotgun approach to hiring. What underscores this for me is the cost of hiring someone—training, downtime, mistakes, etc.

Know what work needs to be done. What are the skills required? What’s the work worth?

Often we’re in the go, go, go mode especially working in a farm. Sometimes we just want to wing it, but then we overestimate our ability to just go wing it and hire someone. Oftentimes, we fail because of that. 

2. Write a job description. (7:15)

Even if it’s written on a napkin.

It’s important to know what tasks need to be performed. What is the value that you’re going to get from that? Create the ideal even if you’re unlikely to hire someone who checks every box. What skills are needed for the tasks? In farming, what are the physical requirements? What are the hours? Come up with all the parameters you’re looking for and start from there. And of course, what are you going to pay for the job? Find out more about what the market is. There’s a lot of sophisticated ways to do that, but you can use a free tool online and combine that with asking around about similar positions—what are peers paying on their farms?

It’s pretty obvious that you have to pay according to the skills required of the job, but another angle to look at it is that the better you pay, the longer you’re going to retain those staff.

Conor Crickmore said that it’s best to pay as much as you can because you want to retain and keep your people happy. You want to make sure that the quality of the work continues to be really good. It’s an investment that will continue to pay off by getting better quality work with better efficiency, along with people who just have the heart for what they’re doing.

How do big companies approach pay?
(13:10) 
There’s no standard way to do that, really. I think some companies are better at it than others. Generally speaking, big companies really focus on making sure that compensation aligns with the company’s strategy. One of the most prevalent things that I’ve seen is considering the market conditions—what jobs are competitive? Another thing to look at is the criticality of the job—what do you have at risk if a person leaves?

“Understand your business, understand the value that you’re going to get from that position, and then design the job around it.”


3. Hire for Potential (18:50)

“Can this person do this job?”

Sometimes, we look for proof that this person can do this job, hence the need for work experience. But if you’re hiring for small farming, you may not have that luxury. I think we should have an open mind about hiring and looking more deeply into someone besides what their application says and see if this is a person who can do the work after being given training and exposure to it.

Keep in mind that experience is not always a great thing. Sometimes hiring someone with a lot of experience can bring bad habits to your workplace, and it would take a while to re-train them from the bad habits. 

Are there specific questions in an interview that would help us to see what potential this person has? (22:35)
Basic Behavioral Interviewing. How do you really understand not what someone has learned to reply to in an interview, but how this person will behave on the job? For example, you ask a very common question, “what does customer service mean to you?” The candidate is then invited to go on this rant about this idealistic, philosophical view of customer service.

A behavioral question about customer service would be, “tell me about a time when you delivered exceptional customer service.” The follow up question to that is, “why did you do that?”

If you’re hiring for harvesting, you can ask something along the lines of, “tell me about a time when you were performing a task that had a standard operating procedure and something required that standard operating procedure to be broken. How did you respond to it?”

The great thing about behavioral interviewing is that it ignites a discussion that allows you to ask follow-up questions and just becomes a natural conversation. What happens is that people get real. They don’t even recognize that it’s an interview. It’s a conversation, and you’re able to learn what makes that person tick, and know about the experiences they have.

 

4. Hiring for Heart. (30:20)

When I want someone who works for me, I want them to be passionate. Maybe not as passionate as I am, but I want that person to be in this for the right reasons. You want to find people who are not just in it for the paycheck, you want people who are passionate about what they’re doing. Hire people who aren’t just looking for a job, find people who are looking for something to do, a lifestyle that feeds their souls.

Is passion something that exudes from people? (34:00)
Sometimes you really do have to pull that out of people. There are extroverts who would walk in and be very personable and outgoing. And there would be introverts, quiet people who are nervous.
You might just have to ask, “out of all the jobs in the world you could be interviewing for today, you’re interviewing for a job at my little farm. Why are you here? Why is this something that’s of interest to you?” And let them talk. 

When you’re interviewing, you should limit your talk time to about 20%. Let them do the talking.


5. Give a realistic job preview. (37:35)

We like to focus on all the things that are really good about a job, but there’s also the downside to things. We need to be prepared to share with the candidate the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I like the idea of giving someone an opportunity to see the work at bare minimum. Don’t interview someone in a coffee shop and make a decision there. Do it on-farm—walk them around, show them, and let them interact if you have other employees. Let them shadow for a day, preferably do that on the hottest or coldest day of the year, and let them see what the worst of the worst is. Don’t try to scare them away, just make sure they really understand the work they’re getting into.

If you can, ask that final candidate to spend a day on the farm. Pay them to do it, even if it’s just a hundred dollars for the day or whatever, and give them work to do that’s real work. Have them shadow along other employees or with you, and don’t leave them unattended. Make this a day where they see various aspects of the work, and treat it as a trial run. It allows you to try them out, and it allows them to interview you.

They may have checked all your boxes but then say no afterwards. That would be worth every penny you paid them, and every minute you spent with them to avoid hiring someone who’s going to leave.


6. Be Open-Minded. (42:20)

The great thing about beginning with the end in mind and really having a job description laid out is that it really helps you to take away stereotypical expectations from your mind. Stereotypes range from age, to generation, to body type, to race, to ethnicity, and these are all the things that taint the interview process.

Being open-minded is about making sure you’re opening your aperture, being open about what kind of person you might hire to do this job. Don’t pigeonhole people. Go through the process and really try to understand them. You’ll find people who are both skilled and passionate in a lot of areas. 


7. Listen to your gut. (46:20)

The gut is an imperfect thing. Your gut, or your intuition, works better with information. So you’ve done everything else, you’ve gone through all the steps, been open-minded, set these criteria, and interviewed someone.

Just because they passed all those steps doesn’t mean they’re the right person. If something inside you says that it just doesn’t feel right, then think it through and ask yourself, am I being biased? Am I bringing my own baggage into this? Am I not giving this person a chance because I have hang-ups? Rationalize it.

“At the end of the day, if it just doesn’t feel right but you can’t put your finger on it, don’t do it.”

Is there any benefit in getting several perspectives? (49:25)
Yes, there is. The challenge is if you get more people to get a say in hiring, the more difficult the decision will be. So just go with the dynamics of your team. If you have a group you’ve been working with whose opinions you trust, chances are, they know the work better than you do. They know what it’s like on that side of the fence, the know the business not as an owner, but as an employee. They could help you identify what kind of person would fit the job.

Halo Bias is when something about a person shines so bright that you can’t see anything else.
This is where outside perspective is particularly helpful, especially when you’re high on someone. 

Desperation on Hiring (57:30)
My experiences taught me that having someone is not necessarily better than having no one. Often, having no one is the better solution. When you’re getting desperate, you should be really careful about the decision you’re about to make.

More than half of people find jobs through referrals.
When you’re looking for someone, employ your friends, acquaintances, your customers. Put it on your Instagram feed, on your Facebook page, and talk to people about what it is you’re looking for. 

“Before you find that you’re at a place where you’re really desperate, consider engaging your community to help you find the right person.”


8. Don’t be Desperate. (1:00:35)

It may be less costly to cut back your production than it is to invest time, payroll dollars, and other peoples’ time to train someone who is not going to work out.

Candidates can see when you’re getting desperate. You start to create your own worst-case scenario where you can get that great person in front of you, but because you seem desperate and frenetic, that person might feel, “this is risky. I’m not going to leave the job I’m at to work for this person who’s desperate to hire someone.”

Setting contingency plans will help you avoid getting desperate. 

 

Got questions? Just want to talk?
You can reach out to Jeremy on Instagram at @RedThreadFarm

 

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FSFS_216_JeremyTolling_HiringList

Diego: [00:00:00] Need to hire somebody for your farm, but not sure where to start. How do you find the right fit? How do you find the right person? That's what this episode is all about. It's eight tips for hiring from somebody who's done it for the last 20 years. Stay tuned for that coming up. Farm small farm smart. I'm your host Diego Dai EGL today's episode of farm.

Small farm smart is brought to you by paper pot co. Our goal at paper pod co is to make you and your employees more efficient and effective with the time that you have one tool for doing that is the paper pot transplanter. Today's episode is brought to you by paper pot co. One of the things that we've done over the past year at paper pot is spent a lot of time doing R and D and development of brand new tools from a brand new drop Cedar that's been redesigned from the ground up to do a lot more than any drop seeder ever has in the past.

Two brand new nursery trays. We have a lot coming your way now. And in the future at paper pot, we're continually trying to make tools that are better, that are more durable, that increase efficiency and effectiveness even more. We want you to buy something once and never have to replace it. It's the buy quality for life mindsets.

So be sure to check out our site paper piko for brand new products, such as the drop Cedar and nursery flats now and over the winter, because we have a lot ahead. I think you're going to like it. Today's episode is all about hiring. I'm joined again by farmer Jeremy, Tali, Jeremy, somebody who farms, but he also works within HR and the healthcare industry.

If you heard the last episode with Jeremy, then you got a little bit of his background and thoughts around hiring today is a much more strict. Sure. It episode where we're going to go through a very simple list, eight things that he learned about hiring during 20 years in human resources, these eight things will help you.

Become a better business owner or manager when it comes to hiring very simple, intuitive things that you can do during the hiring process, both before, during, and after the hiring process, they're simple, intuitive things. They're simple things that you can do. Before during, and after the interview process to try and find the best fit possible for your business.

Some of these things are intuitive. Some of these things aren't intuitive, and some of these things may question how you would normally do things for me personally, this list has helped out a lot in the hiring process that I've recently gone through, given that. I know it's going to really help some of you out there.

If you're thinking about hiring now or in the near future, then this episode is, must have a listen and enjoy. So let's jump right into it. It's eight things about hiring with Jeremy. So number one on your list of. The eight things you learn in hiring in the last 20 years in HR is begin with the end in mind.

What does that mean?

Jeremy Tolley: [00:03:39] You�d be surprised how many managers, business owners go into a hiring decision? Just feeling Hey, I just, I need a body. And they just place an ad, with the general job title, maybe just put a few things together or they go out and try to recruit friends, family, acquaintances, to work for them without really putting the thought into what needs to get done.

What is this job about? What are what's required? So beginning with the end in mind is all about what is it that you want this person to accomplish? What does success look like? and it's avoiding the shotgun approach to hiring. You got to really do your homework and what really underscores this for me, ego is the cost of hiring someone.

And yeah, often when we think about the cost of employing someone, we think about, the salary that you're going to pay and the taxes. but then what really, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Think about the opportunity cost for you. If you have other employees who are going to be working with this person, you've got to train, they're going to be nonproductive time.

There's going to be mistakes. There's going to be a crop failure because that person forgot to turn on the irrigation. the list goes on and on about what the. Costs end up being. So it's just so important before you ever start hiring to know what work needs to be done. what are the skills that are required to do the work and what's the work going to be worth?

don't go into a market to hire someone without knowing. What it is that you need to pay to make sure that's in line with what you feel is reasonable and that you're going to get an ROI for. gosh, it sounds so obvious, but often when we're in the go mode, especially working on a farm and you've got, the rush and the madness of that of trying to make it happen.

We just want to wing it because we think that, We overestimate our ability to just to go wing it and to hire someone. And often we fail because of that.

Diego: [00:05:34] It's a very true point. And I've had this list from you for a while over a month now, and I am in the process of hiring somebody. So I've used this list quite a bit to think about this in your right, a lot of my time and putting together.

Not just who I was looking for, but what I was looking for has been thinking about what are they going to do, where I have been, where you described, I just need somebody in here to take some pressure off to do something. And it's really taken some time for me to sit down and say, what exactly am I going to have them do?

And then I come up with a list of projects and day to day activities. And then also really asking. Is this something that's important because sometimes we think it needs to be done like the one off projects in our head, and then you put it on paper and it's is this enough to give somebody to have them time on it, to work hard on it?

Is it going to make a difference or should it even be on the list to begin with? And cross it off and there's a lot of things I've came up with and thought, I really need to get this done. Then I wrote it down and really thought about it and said, if I spend all this time giving this to somebody, am I going to get some sort of return on this?

And the answer has been no. So I think really defining what that person is going to do, how they're going to do it. What impact it's going to have has really helped me as somebody who's looking to hire.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:07:03] That's great. And I really appreciate it as you and I have been talking through this that you have taken the time to write a job description, and that would be my advice to anyone who's going to hire to write a job description.

Even if that's written on a napkin. but it's so important to know what are those tasks that are going to be performed? And as you mentioned, Diego, what is the value that you're going to get from that? what's funny, I've done the same exercise in the past. writing out what I'm going to have this person to do, and I'm thinking about it.

And if I'm not willing to pay this person to do this, my time is inherently more valuable. then you know, and an employee, because the business owner, you're the brain trust. So if you're spending your time on that, but you don't think it's worth paying someone else to do it, maybe it's a test that should be automated or maybe not done at all, but that job description is so important.

And in addition to the task, what are the skills that are needed? So create the ideal. It doesn't mean that you're gonna hire, you're likely won't hire someone that has every, the checks every box, but what are those skills? I think in this line of work, it's also important to know what are the physical requirements, is this a job where you're going to have a bookkeeper to do some work, but then on Saturdays, They're going to be expected to help with the farmer's market.

there's a physical requirement involved in lifting and moving. the hours just come up with all those different parameters of what you're looking for and start there. And then the last point on that Degas would be about, let's make sure that you know what you're going to pay. for the job, find out more about what the market is and that there's a lot of sophisticated ways to do that, but it can be as simple as going and using one of the free tools online.

And combining that with just asking around for similar type positions, what peers are paying on their farms, or what you've been successful at paying at, on your farm in the past, and then knowing what you're going to pay.

Diego: [00:08:53] I think sounds obvious. To some people, but there's a lot of nuance in that because you might say, we can only afford to pay this, but then what work are you giving them?

I visited a few dairy farms over the summer and they have a variety of positions from being in the milk room to being a herd manager in each requires different skill sets. If somebody is going to say split time, you're going to be a herd manager, but I also need you to work with the calves.

Some of the time, one of those might be require a higher skilled person than the other thereby requiring a different amount of pay. And even when I was looking at, when I was hiring, I potentially needed somebody who could do more physical stuff like packing, then somebody who could do more mental stuff like writing, typically a physical paying warehouse job.

In most places, it's going to pay less than somebody who's doing something creative because the creative or the technical side on a computer is going to require more skill. So when you look at the job and you wrote down, here's what I'm hiring for. How much of that falls into what skill pool and is what you want to pay or what you think you're going to have to pay reflective of what that person is actually doing.

So if you're just hiring for a farmer's market, maybe you just need somebody to do sales, but if you're hiring for harvesting, maybe skill is important in there because you want speed. You want somebody to weed out quality in the field, and that might have. A different pay grade than somebody who's just, standing there saying hi, or working in cash register for you at the time.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:10:45] That's right. The other dynamic is, typically the better you pay the longer you're going to retain those staff. And I think, gosh, I'm remembering Connor Crick more in, maybe it was one of your podcasts who said it best. That pay as much as you can because you want to retain, you want to keep people happy.

You want to, make sure the quality of the work continues to be really good. And, there's a sweet spot where that investment will continue to pay off, by getting better quality work, better efficiency and people who just have the heart for what you're for what they're doing makes a big difference.

Diego: [00:11:18] How do big companies approach pay, win? I did the urban farmer series with Curtis. He talked a lot about his farm manager, Mark, who he had working for him for a few years and a paid him really well. I think when he ultimately working for him, he was making around $30 an hour for a farm worker, pretty high in the vege space compared to what I think a lot of farmers are paying labor out there.

And I know Curtis looked at it with. I'm getting, a hundred dollars an hour in return for his labor and a lot of small businesses. I think I could be in here could say, ah, $30 an hour or 20 hours an hour. that's a lot, we focus on what we're paying side and maybe the business isn't huge.

So there isn't just this massive amount of cash to. To pay everybody a high amount. So we feel tighter about the dollars that we have as small business. And we focus on the hourly wage. We're paying without thinking we're getting more than we're paying out back in return. So I could hire somebody for 20, but I get $60 an hour of work back.

Versus I don't hire anybody. So my cost is zero and I get zero hours of work back. How does a big company think about that ROI on a wage?

Jeremy Tolley: [00:12:53] Sure. There's no standard way to do that. I think some companies are much better at it than others. Generally speaking, big companies, like the one that.

I work at are really focused on making sure that compensation aligns with the company strategy. So that's just a fancy way to repeat what you're saying. and I think there's a couple of things that I've seen most prevalent and one is what are the market conditions? right now we have the lowest unemployment rate that we've had.

And I forget when it's historic. Lowe's for unemployment. It's been all over the news. and people have plenty of opportunities out there. If you're looking for someone, accounting, I think he's a good, is a good one to you use as a proxy for this discussion. Accountants are in high demand, even accounting, clerks, accounts, payable, clerks, accounts, receivables, there's a big demand for those jobs in many parts of the country right now.

And it's really tight. So that's a job that's super competitive. And so many companies are starting to pay more because it's competitive. And then the other dynamic that you look at is the criticality of that job. So what is the risk? You know what you have at risk, if a person leaves, if they quit that job.

So for us an it developer, for example, in the middle of a big project, developing a new app for the company, they have been spending, 50 hours a week on this project. If they give us the two week notice, then, that project is at risk. So that's a job where it's so critical and it also coincides with a huge market demand for that particular job that we end up paying more for that position higher than the normal market rates, because of the risk of losing that person.

But I like the way that you're looking at it there of, what if you're paying it's ends up being about $62,000 a year at that rate that you just mentioned, if you can, if that's the time that you're taking away from you personally, and you could go make six figures in a, in doing consulting with that extra time that you've given your given back then you've more than paid for that person.

So just it's just It's just so variable. but I think the important thing is if I were to come back to, what do you do with that information, understand your business, understand the value that you're going to get from that position, and then designed the job around that. And I just, I think your advice was so wise Diego, about making sure that you really understand, are you going to get the ROI from each particular task you're having that person do.

Diego: [00:15:29] It's almost like insurance in a way. When you get somebody good, you don't want them to leave. Like you were saying, like if you have somebody spending 50 hours a week developing an app and they leave in the middle of it, not only might you have a hard time finding somebody to replace them, but you lose all that downtime.

And then just the onboarding time of bringing that new person in. So you could be stingy as a small business and say, I want to pay somebody less and you're saving a few bucks an hour. Or you could pay a few dollars an hour more in insurance, and it's not going to guarantee that they stay, but I'm assuming most people are going to have a harder time leaving a job that they get paid more for than they get paid less for.

if they feel like they're underpaid, it's a little bit easier for them to grease their mind out the door. And if you're getting paid more, I think there's some. Tie in between appreciation and pay. I felt bad at some of the jobs I've had. So by paying a little bit more you're not insuring a hundred percent, but you're maybe giving yourself a little bit of this person might want to stay insurance. Maybe.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:16:48] Yeah. Yeah. There's a tipping point. where, you have to find this right place to be when it comes to pay and compensation is it's as much art as it is science, honestly. when we do compensation, we can run all kinds of reports and data and, buy data from warehouses and put it together and fancy spreadsheets and formulas.

And the end of the day, we have to go back and tweak that. Based on these variables. And I still, we'll have employees that end up in our office saying, I really feel like I'm not being paid enough. I'm not valued. Sometimes when you dive into that conversation, it's. it's their perception because of the way Pei's been communicated to them, or because they feel like someone across the hall is making is doing similar work and, making more money, which may or may not be true.

Oh gosh, we could have a whole conversation about how to retain people. Maybe we should someday. but it's not just about the money, but you have to get the money,

Diego: [00:17:45] So this is all part of your preplanning, getting the money, right? Thinking about what that person's going to do. You begin with the end in mind.

Once you have that end quantified probably on paper or on a computer screen, then you start to look towards hiring. There's a lot of ways you can go there. You can hire for skill. You can hire for personality. You can hire for heart. You can hire for potential, and heart are two on those lists. But you have for number two, hire for potential. Can you elaborate on what you're looking for in terms of potential to bring somebody on.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:18:21] Sure. And I'm not sure I would put potential Overhardt they just ended up on my list that way. But when I say hire for potential, what you're looking for is, can this person do this job?

Not always. Has this person done this job in the past. And I think a lot of times we go into hiring and we say, I want someone who can do this kind of work. And in order to prove that they can do this kind of work, they have to have been doing this work for some period of time. So that's the old one. I see a job posting.

It must have five years of experience doing XYZ. and that's great. And in some professions that's really required. if you're going to hire a controller for your, accounting function at your corporate business, then yeah. You don't want to take a chance on someone who hasn't done that work before, but when for the jobs we're hiring for in small farming, You may not have the luxury of depending on where you're at geographically, especially you may not have the luxury of having someone come to you with five years of, harvest experience in farmer's market experience and stuff like that would be great if they had that.

maybe, but. I think we have to plan on not maybe looking for that, trying to see if we can find someone, but hiring someone who has the potential to do that. And one down further my list, we're going to talk more specifically about how I would recommend we go about ferreting out that potential.

But in this one, I think what I'd like to do is. make sure that we all have an open mind about hiring and, looking more deeply into someone besides what their application says, and digging deeper into, is this a person who can do the work if given the training and given the exposure to it?

the other thing that I would say is keep in mind that sometimes hiring someone with a lot of experience can bring bad habits to your workplace. I'd like to say that people who are really experienced often have a lot of baggage. That would be the case with me. if I went to work for another company who had a different culture or doing, different kinds of things, I have a certain amount of baggage that I'm going to bring with me of my conception about what's the right thing to do and how work should get done or what I should do and what our priorities.

And it would be difficult for an organization to retrain me on that. Would it take a while to do that? so I think that we should also look at it that way, that experiences. Not always, a great thing. So you can interview for potential and you can find out, is this person really going to be able to do the type of work that we're going to be asking to do? Does it make sense?

Diego: [00:20:54] It does. And then looking for that potential, there's a few ways we can try and reconcile that in our minds through. Whatever material, they submit back to you in response to a job offer. So they give you something written. There's something there that you can look at to try and say, okay, is there a potential here? You're gonna have a conversation with them. And in that conversation, you're going to have just a subconscious feel, a gut feel of what that person might have in them, how they might be a fit to help.

Distill that down out of what they're talking about. Are there specific questions you think in an interview that could help suss out what potential will this person have for a fit?

Jeremy Tolley: [00:21:50] Absolutely. And maybe that'll take us to my other point about, I think that anyone who's doing hiring should really learn how to do basic.

It's called behavioral interviewing. That's really just a fancy term to say, how do you really understand not what someone has learned? To reply to in an interview, and anybody can speak without canned responses, but how can you fare it out? How is this person going to actually behave on the job?

So if you understand behavioral interviewing, if we could start with traditional interview questions that we would ask a candidate, So those are the questions that, we've all been asked before, no matter what job that we've been in. so things like, if you, for example, if you, I wanted to talk to someone to understand more about it, someone's per customer service, abilities and skills and interests.

The question that often comes up is tell me what customer service means to you. And so the candidate then is invited to go on this rant about this idealistic, philosophical view of customer service, which everyone is going to say the customer is always right. And all those kind of canned responses that we've all been taught.

A behavioral question about customer service would be. Tell me about a time when you delivered exceptional customer service. And the followup question to that is why did you do it? So the response that you might get was, there was a time when a customer, when I was working in retail and a customer came back with a, with an article of clothing and they were really upset about, the fact that it shrank after they washed it.

And. I went above and beyond by doing XYZ. And here's how I handled that. And so you're looking for not just, I followed the company's policy, I issued them a return and they moved on. If that person really understands customer service, they're going to give you an example of something specific they did.

That really was exceptional. That wow. The person. So then the, I love the followup question to this. Why did you do that? So if the person says, that's because our companies, expects us to do that to well, the customer, because I worked at Nordstrom, I had to do that or they might say it made me feel really good to be able to do something great for this person.

It made me feel really good to represent my company that way. Bam, that's the kind of person that you want at your farmer's market. I'm not the person that did that because they were obligated to do it because it was the policy.

Diego: [00:24:28] What would be a way to ask that around hiring for, let's say harvesting more field work. Is it something like, tell me about a time when you were performing a task that had an, a standard operating procedure. And something required that standard operating procedure be changed or broken. How did you respond?

Jeremy Tolley: [00:24:56] That's a great one. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And then, so they're going to describe some situation, I could imagine it's, they were working in manufacturing and there was something that caused the defect and, they might talk about, then it was there, there was protocols they followed.

So yeah, we want to dig deeper to find out. Can they give you an example of where they had to use jugs? because there might not be a. Policy that, you might not have a policy that says if you know the leaves on this particular root vegetable are starting to look purple. There may be a nutrient deficiency.

You want that person to look for unusual things and know when to. When to pause and ask for help or, tell someone about that. So I think, digging, you can keep the great thing about behavioral interviewing is that it ignites a discussion, which allows you to ask follow up questions. It just becomes a natural conversation.

And what happens is that people get real. They actually share their heart. They share real examples and they don't even recognize that's, that it's an interview. It's just a conversation and you're able to learn what makes that person tick and what experiences do they really have. And then you can take those examples and you can apply them to the job that they're going to be doing. And it becomes a matter of can I see this person in the job that I have or not.

Diego: [00:26:20] When it comes to potential, you know, it's football season right now, a lot of NFL teams draft for potential, especially when it comes to a quarterback, a very important position on a football team, maybe the most important position.

So they're hiring for what the, this person could do their franchise over the next 15 years. Part of that is their leadership ability. Part of that is they're tangible skills. Part of that is. How their physical attributes, part of that is their heart, which is an item on your list higher for heart.

When you think about potential, are you looking for all of the above? No, obviously it changes based upon the position, but do you weight certain things higher than the other? Cause you could hire a, an absolute perfect fit. That has great potential from a technical standpoint, all of the skills you need, but they're half in it.

HeartWise or you could have somebody who's totally into it because they love the line of work, but their skills are just lacking there or they're inherently slow. They're just not a fast worker. So when you look for potential, how do you blend out? All these things that go into what might make that person a great fit in weight, it the best way for your phone.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:27:51] Sure. I think I'm going to have to go back to say, just to emphasize the need to put the thought into it with step one, begin with the end in mind. And part of that process can be. What is most critical. So if most small farms have generalists who work for them. There's not, no, this person only does harvesting this only, this person only works in the packing shed.

This person only does seeding that. I don't think that's the case with most of the people listening to the podcast. we're all about, there's a lot of, there's a broad set of tasks that this person might do given the time of the year, the time of day. But I also think that kind of weighting those things and understanding that going into the hiring process, that these are the three things that are just critical.

I can't hire anybody unless they have these skills and abilities. These other three things at the bottom of the list would be really nice to have. And if I could get someone who had all six. That'd be great, but if not, then I can compromise on the last three, because I could get someone else to do that.

I could teach that person to do that. I could continue to do that myself. cash though, what should we, you can look at it for those skills and those abilities. You could ask those behavioral questions to find out. Does that person have the ability to do that, but that. That number three about hiring for heart, I think is really important.

And I think that really, for me, Diego overrides. All the other things are critical. But when I have someone that works for me, I want that person to be passionate and maybe not quite as passionate about it as I am, but I want that person to be in this for the right reasons. And when you're talking to someone and they have, all these great skills and abilities and a great resume, and they've done a lot of stuff, but if they're not passionate about it, if they want to do it, just because they need a paycheck, then.

the level of effort and of their brain power in there that they put into it is going to be lower. turnover is crazy these days. the turnover in the service sector is about 50%. So this is, everything from concessions workers to valet park, or is it hotels, et cetera.

restaurants have 75% turnover rate. So if you're a restaurant owner, then chances are only one in four people that you have working for, you will be with you at that point, the following year. it's, these are similar type pools that we're drawing from often. So you want to find people who really are not just in it for a paycheck, they're in it because they're passionate about what they're doing.

And it doesn't mean that they want to be a farmer, the rest of their life necessarily, but they've got some connection. So the work that we're doing. so for me, those things are, I think about people who have a connection to food and wholesome living and nutrition, people who are like to be outdoors connected to nature.

people who just really enjoy that. They've got. that they've got some history of farming in their family. Maybe they're wanting to go back to their roots to experience more about what their grandparents did. so hiring for heart for me is all about finding someone who has a connection to the work and.

That they have the ability to be passionate about that work. they're not just looking for a job. They're looking for something to do that really, is a lifestyle or in some way, satisfies, feeds their soul. and that can come in a lot of different packages, but if you can find that and you can find.

back to my example of the top three things that you weren't willing to compromise on. You've got a really solid candidate who's likely to stay with you longer deliver better results and ultimately deliver a better ROI.

Diego: [00:31:35] And the hire for heart is something I think maybe people might downplay. I think I did initially. And then you think about. What job would you want to do? Do you want to work somewhere where you're just doing a task that you're good at or a hobby? you might be great at one skill set that you acquired over your life, but you're just sick of doing it. You're not into doing it, but somebody wants to play that game or do that thing.

And you're like, Oh, alright, it's drudgery. And then you look at the work that you do on a day to day basis, where you get into this flow state and you just get lost in the work time. Disappears. And you get a lot done. And before the day's over, before, you know it, the day's over because you were just so absorbed in it, it's like, wouldn't you want an employee to be the same way where they're not just looking at the clock, counting the minutes.

They just, they become absorbed in that they get lost in that. And I see it as important. Is that just something that. That person's going to exude, or is the behavioral interviewing something that susses that out?

Jeremy Tolley: [00:32:48] Yeah. it's interesting. You do have to sometimes pull that out of people. So first context of an interview, many people are really intimidated by that. Maybe they're trying to put on their best face because they are, they really need the job. and so they get nervous to just the idea of going to an interview causes most people to freeze up. the level of. No scrutiny that they feel like that they're going through.

So you won't necessarily see passion in someone, some people you will. There's these outgoing people that are going to walk in and, they're gonna, just super personable and outgoing and extroverted, and they're going to share their passion for small scale farming. And, that would be easy to see that, but then you've got quiet people, introverts people who are nervous, who.

You might have to, as you say, suss that out, you might have to ask the questions. and there again, you can just ask, what, of all the jobs in the world that you could be interviewing for today. You're interviewing for a job at my level little farm. Why are you here? why is this something that's of interest to you?

Let the person talk you should be doing no more than 20% of the talking in an interview. the candidate you should, open ended questions and behavioral questions to get that person engaged in a dialogue and you can listen for what makes this person tick. Why are they here? How are they going to develop a connection with this farm that causes it to become a passion for them and causes my customers and other employees and everyone to have this contagious kind of passion that happens.

For what we're doing, that if you can achieve that, it's magic and I'm sure folks are probably listening to me and thinking I'm being overly idealistic, that we're going to find someone who is going to work on our farm doing frankly, some of the drudgery that goes with the work that we have to do, but I don't think I'm being overly idealistic. If it were my money, we're spending that I would search high and low. I'd find that needle in a haystack of someone who had both skill.

Diego: [00:35:03] And passion or heart is the danger in all. This is you don't have that heart and you become a statistic part of that high turn over rate. That's out there in the labor force with many job options available now today, and then you're doing it all over again.

And I think knowing just the amount of time I've spent going into this. I don't want to be doing this every month, especially when it gets busy. And if you're hiring at the beginning of a season or in the off season for somebody who's going to work with you peak season, I'm thinking like you better be damn sure that person's going to be there through the peak season because.

If hiring's a pain in February, it's going to be awful in June.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:35:47] Absolutely. one of the things that I think can really help with retention that you can do in the, as part of the interview process is to give a realistic job preview and that's point number five on my list. we like to focus on all the things that are really good about a job. And we, our tendency is to talk about, I can imagine, in our space to talk about the good that we doing and the soil that we're building and the biology. And, you know what, we're, the great food that we're delivering and how much better that is, what a great product, what a great service we're providing for our community.

but there's also the downside and we need to be prepared with the candidate to share the good, the bad and the ugly, because you can be passionate about something and not really understand what that something is. And then later lose your passion for it. When you find out that, Oh, I didn't realize that I was going to be working in the rain.

Oh, I didn't realize that, washing salad greens is this kind of level of detail and, Oh, I didn't realize that I would be indoors or, in the opposite of that'd be outdoors all the time. So there's a lot of, physical, mental, challenges that come with any type of farming.

So if you're hiring someone who's worked on a farm before. you can fast forward through that because they likely know about that. But, I really liked this idea of giving someone an opportunity to see the work at bare minimum. Don't just interview someone in a coffee shop, who hasn't seen the farm and make a decision there, do it on farm.

Walk them around. Show them, let them interact. If you have other employees or if your family is going to be working with them, let them have those interactions with others, casual interactions, let them shadow for a day. preferably having to do that on the hottest day of the year or the coldest day of the year, let them see what the worst of the worst is.

Don't try to scare them away, but just make sure they really understand. I always like to say. when people who don't know about farming, ask me, is it hard work? I'll show him my fingernails and what my hands look like and how my knuckles are all scraped up. there's a physical piece of that people need to understand, but, gosh, I would have a person, if you can.

I would have that final candidate that you really think has all of these components, ask them to spend a day on the farm. Pay them to do it, even if you just give them a hundred dollars for the day or whatever, but give them work to do that's real work, shadow along. Other employees are certainly with you and don't just leave them unattended, but really make this a day where they can see various things, aspects of harvest, of prep, of packaging, of if it's, back off office accounting work they're going to be doing, or the monotony of.

getting all the labels ready for, for the Saturday farmer's market, have them to actually be on the farm, doing some of the work and it's a trial run. Yeah. And it allows them, it allows you to be able to. Try them out, but it really allows them to be able to interview you and to see the job they may be.

They may have checked all your boxes and then they say, nah, it wasn't what I was looking for. That would be worth every penny that you paid them. And every minute of time that you spent with them to avoid hiring someone who ultimately is going to leave.

Diego: [00:39:06] Yeah. Then Tim and undo it all. And. Start over. Yes.

Cut at the beginning. Do you think you'd drop the bombs right at the beginning of the interview, one full day, every week, eight hours is going to be washing greens or every Monday or hand transplanting beds. We spent all morning doing it from 6:00 AM to 11:00 AM. You're on the ground. You're bending over. Is that okay. You lay it out there like that.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:39:36] Yeah. Yeah. I think you do. like I said, don't try to scare them off. don't make it sound worse than it really is, but just be realistic and, gosh, that's something, I would give someone in a schedule to take with them to say, here's what our weekly schedule looks like. Here's the monotony and let me go show you what that looks like. and or we use a paper pot, so let me show you how that works. And, or we hand transplant this particular or, vegetables. Yeah, I would be just really the more information you can share with them to help them make their decision, I think the better.

Diego: [00:40:12] But given that number six on your list is be open minded beyond just going in with, this is exactly the type of person I need. How does that actually play out? How do you. Be open minded throughout this whole process.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:40:29] Yeah. So we all have some sort of preconceived notions, biases, unconscious biases, usually about employees, about what people can do.

and so the great thing about. Beginning with the end in mind and really having a job description laid out is that it really helps you to undertake the focus away from, in your mind, stereotypically. What kind of person is going to do this job. And that could be, you've got in your mind that, this is a back office job.

So this is probably going to be a female, or this is a field job. So more than likely this is going to be a young male, who's going to do that. Those are some of the type of stereotypes that we might have. the stereotypes range from, age, we have stereotypes about generation, both good and bad.

someone's body type. Someone's race, someone's ethnicity. These are all the things that kind of taint the interview process. That is just the baggage that we all bring to the table in these biases that we have. So being open minded for me is about making sure that you really are opening your aperture, opening your mind about, what kind of person that you might hire.

To do a particular job. I have heard so much recently and I listened to a lot of different podcasts, yours and others in this space. And there are so many women who are getting into small scale farming who are working on farms because they want to do that or just working on farms because they enjoy that or starting their own farms.

And, just a few years ago, I don't know, expert in this, but I think that would have been a surprise. Too many people. So I think that's a good example, looking at someone and thinking this person can't handle a two wheel tractor, or, this person probably can't handle the physical aspect of the job.

You don't know that. So I think that's where. back to that realistic job preview, spending a day with that person and seeing do they like the work? Can they do the work? Are they willing to do the work? I do. I think older workers is. Or an area that the entire economy is struggling with.

What do we do with folks who are aging, who want to continue to work? People are living longer. People don't have, the retirement savings that they need. They want to stay engaged. Generally people are healthier that the world has really changed. So I think that's an area that I'm always encouraging.

Folks who are hiring to take a look at that. You've got someone who they may seem way overqualified. They were a rocket science for, 40 years, and now they want to do something that. It's comparatively menial. maybe that's just passionate about that. That's what they want to do. So find out what makes that person tick and yeah, the open-minded.

I have so many things, examples of just in my hiring when I've been surprised when someone has sat in front of me to interview for a job and, I'm ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I do this as internal eye roll about, Oh, this is going to be a waste of my time. But when I get into it, we start talking about it.

Sometimes I am really surprised that my bias, my preconceived notion was just dead wrong. don't pigeonhole people, go through the process, really try to understand. And I think you can find people who are both skilled and passionate in a lot of different areas.

Diego: [00:43:57] And one of the points on your list is number eight is listen to your gut. Does a lot of that just translate through subconsciously you just know, or you don't know?

Jeremy Tolley: [00:44:07] Yeah. The gut is, It's a, it's an imperfect thing. I believe this is what I always say to people who come to me and ask me about, should they trust their gut, your gut, or your intuition works better with information.

So for me, The gut decision is the last it's on this list is the last thing for a reason. And that's because once you've done everything else and you've gone through all the steps and you've been openminded and you've set these criteria and you've interviewed someone, just because they pass all of those steps, doesn't mean that's the right person.

If they're, if there's something inside you that says. It just doesn't feel right or just, I don't know then think through and ask yourself, am I being biased? Am I bringing my own baggage into this? Am I not giving this person a chance? Because I have some, hang up. and so talk through that with yourself.

If you've got a business partner or a spouse that's in your business or another employee, talk through that with someone else and rationalize it. But at the end of the day, If it doesn't feel right, even if you can't put your finger on it, tell him do it. it's an expensive investment to hire someone.

that goes way beyond the hourly rate that you're paying the onboarding, the training, all the things that I've mentioned. there's a big cost for it. And if there's a chance that it's not the right one, just wait. Don't do it.

Diego: [00:45:36] I like the point you brought up there of. Ask yourself. Why internally, if you don't think it's a fit in your gut, why?

Cause you're definitely right. It could be a hangup within us. Like we're just not over some issue we have. It could be, we don't have a piece of information and maybe we could clarify that. Maybe talking it through with somebody else, a concern we have might. Correct. Our gut or bring more information into the brains of the gut can make the better decision when it's listened to your guide.

how much do you think it should be? Guts, plural, where the hiring is done or the interviewing is done by a couple people? I think in the previous podcast we talked about. Having coworkers chat with this person. Maybe there's a co owner of the business who wouldn't be involved in the management of this person, but they have an outside take.

Do you find that having a team participate in this. Is more of an exercise in just gathering too much data or is there a legit benefit to getting several perspectives, blending that information, blending, all those gut feels down to get a more informed. Decision at the end of the day.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:47:10] Yes. I really believe that there is, it's the first, I'll say if your spouse is your business partner and they say, they're not sure about it, don't do it, but yeah. But, gosh, I do think that it's. Really helpful to get various perspectives involved. I think the other dynamic that can happen when you're adding someone else to an existing team is to get that team's buy-in, you hire someone and they show up and you've got a team of three people. Then that's going to be a really cold.

Or cool welcome potentially. Yeah, because they don't have anything invested in this person. hopefully your team is great and they pull together and high five and we're going to help this person be successful. But you're more likely to ensure that if those stakeholders have a say, so hire did challenge is the more people that you involve in a hiring decision, the more difficult it's going to be.

To make the hire and, especially, if you're trying to get to consensus, that can be really tough, not impossible, but maybe much harder. So I think you have to go with the dynamics of your team. If you've got someone that, you've, if you've just got really different personalities and if there's already conflict and maybe you've got someone on your team that you think is gonna.

have a different vision than what you have for the position, then maybe you're better off not to involve them or at least not to give them too much say so in the decision. But if you've got a team that is working well together, hopefully you've got a group that you've been working with and you trust their, perspective.

They're the folks who probably know the job better than you do, honestly. They know the ins and outs. They know what it's like to be on that side of the fence to be not an owner in the business, but to be an employee, they can help you identify the kind of person that would fit well.

So depending on your dynamics, I think that's a great way to help vet, folks. And that's a great place to have them to be involved in that kind of, that realistic job preview day to have them work alongside multiple people. And then at the end of the day, when that person leaves huddle with your team and just say, what were your observations?

tell me about what you saw and, let's have a discussion about whether or not you think this person has the skills and the ability and the cultural fit to join our team.

Diego: [00:49:30] Anything where a second opinion may come in very handy and this might contradict. What people are thinking is when you really like somebody for a fit.

Yes. Because when you fall in love with any idea that we have and anything we've ever done, like we just throw all the supporting info within our mind while this is great, and we ignore everything that's bad and somebody made. I just think of this key and Peele spit skit about hiring where, they're just hitting it off, joking around in the hiring process.

And maybe somebody just has a great personality and they'd be a good friend and you get so lost in the interview with engaging with them that you forget that this person's here to do a job and you just keep supporting them in your mind. And then somebody from the outside, it's Whoa, you're missing these, all of these things. And go back to the team for that to get a better feel.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:50:24] Yeah. It's called the halo bias. There's something about this person that it shines so brightly. We can't see anything else. you hit it off, because you're like the same sports team and you start having a discussion about that.

And, the other thing is. We often want to hire someone who is like us. It's really comfortable when we can look at another person and feel like we're looking in the mirror and I'm guilty of this as well. I pride myself on being entrepreneurial and hardworking and all those kinds of things. And, when I see someone particularly a young person who reminds me of what I was like at that age, I'm really drawn to that person.

I, want to, it's almost a paternal instinct. I want to help that person be successful. And, I sometimes will start going down a road. So it's really helpful then to have someone else to say, did you notice that person said this or did you notice that person has not been at a job for more than six months in their work history?

and to help balance that out a little bit. I think you're absolutely right. Very helpful to get another perspective, particularly when you're really high on something.

Diego: [00:51:30] I need to take notes during an interview, or are you just trying to absorb it all mentally? Or if you take notes, you maybe lose a little bit of the, on the fly interaction, but you have something to go back to when you separate from the situation and just review or do you make notes right after.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:51:50] Yeah, I'm a middle of the ground kind of approach. It's we've moved. Many of us have been in these interviews when you're sitting across the table and everything you say, someone's writing it down. It's just intimidating. It's the

Diego: [00:52:02] totally.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:52:03] Yeah. It's just not, you want this to be conversational because you want this person, you want to get them out of interviewing mode.

You want to get them to be real. so what I typically do when I'm going into that kind of situation is first. Be in a casual setting. I like to interview in coffee shops, interviewing outdoors on your farm if it's pleasant day, just in way place that makes it not feel like an interview.

I would have a piece of paper though. I have a notebook. And what I say at the beginning is. I have a bad memory. You're probably gonna say some things that are really important that I want to ask you more about later. Do you mind if, as we have a conversation, if I jot a few things down and you're welcome to do the same thing, so take them off guard, let them know that you're going to do it, but then yes, after the meeting is over, when it's fresh on your mind, that's when you really want to jot down.

This is what I want to dig further into, or these are the concerns that I had, because if you're interviewing multiple people, it's going to start getting jumbled in your mind and you won't be able to remember who said what and what concerns you. Yeah.

Diego: [00:53:02] So here's a scenario given everything that we've talked about, seven points out of the eight on the list so far, somebody might listen to this thinking about hiring for the 2020 season.

They're going through all these motions and February and March, they need somebody on the farm by April one. And the clock is ticking. The calendar's rolling by. They're not finding the potential, the heart, the person, but they're talking to people and they have some people they know if they don't have somebody.

And they're picking up the workload yet. They don't have somebody who, according to these metrics or the way we've framed, this is close to a perfect fit. So they pick a body instead of the ideal body, they go desperate mode. And I can understand that pressure of someone is surely better than no one. We have a timeline we are up against here. If we push it back too much, it's a next year thing, not a, this year thing. What are your thoughts on that desperation around hiring?

Jeremy Tolley: [00:54:30] Yeah, I've done this. I've been guilty of it. I've certainly seen it happen a lot. and my experience has taught me. That having someone is not necessarily better than having no one often having no one is the better solution.

So if it's just, can't find anyone, if you feel like you're starting to get desperate. You should be really careful about the decision that you're about to. so you get in the weeds and chances are, you're going to make a really bad decision. And then when you're hiring an employee, you have, I have to live with that decision.

sure. you can let them go. you could fire them. And most small employers, aren't subject to a lot of the scrutiny and the labor practices and the laws and that kind of stuff. But, you're messing with somebody's livelihood. This is a person who has. utility bills to pay and a family to feed.

And, it's just not even ethical to hire someone that you don't think is the right person for the job. It would be much more ethical to hire someone as a temp, do something on a trial basis. if you're at that point and you need someone to work, but before you get to that point, I guess there's one other thing that I want to say about finding candidates and that is.

I forget the statistic. I think it's about 75%. It's certainly more than half of people find jobs through networks, through referrals, not through a posting on Craigslist or certainly in an ad in the newspaper these days. when you're looking for someone, employee, your friends, your acquaintances, your customers, put it on your Instagram feed, put it on your Facebook page, and talk to people about what it is that you're looking for.

So when I'm looking for someone to join my team, in the corporate world, the first thing that I do is I start sending messages to people that I'm acquainted with, whose opinions I trust to say, I'm looking for this position. And here's really what I would be excited about. This is the kind of person that I'm looking for.

Do you know anybody? I can almost always find a great candidate that way. And I think that would be true as well. by communicating with all the people who are connected to our farm. And I've heard a lot about where people are saying that their best employees come from their customer base, those people are.

really they're connected to the business already. They're connected to the farm. they share just by virtue of the fact that they're paying more for produce than they would get at the grocery store. They have a connection to the work and the product that's being produced. but before you find, that you're at a place where you're desperate, Consider, really engaging your community to help you to find the right person.

But, at the end of the day, if you find that you're there, don't be desperate. And that's the last point that I have. it's gonna, it may be actually less costly to cut back your production than it would be to invest time payroll dollars and other people's time. To train someone who's not going to work out.

the other thing is when we start getting desperate candidates can see that. So you start to create your own worst case scenario, where you can get that great person in front of you, but because you seem desperate and you're frenetic and, you're not, you don't seem level headed. That person's going to feel that this is risky.

I'm not going to leave the job that I'm at to go work for this person. that's desperate to hire someone something's wrong. people, even if you're not saying that then your body language, the tone of your voice, the way that you're communicating will really show that. and it's, I think it's tough when you're in the middle of that and you're feeling desperate to not let that happen, but just be really conscious of that would be my advice.

Diego: [00:58:17] At one point, I see desperation potentially really disrupting an operation is they come in and they just they're a cancer to the employee culture. Like they have a great skillset, but they're just. They make everybody else miserable. So you're getting the job done, but now this person, nobody likes them and they whine, or they start to infect other people sprains.

And you're seeing issues where you didn't before. So I love the point you made. What about maybe the plan is to modify our production or business plan here so we can go at it without someone. Until we find someone we do think will be a fit skill wise and culture wise.

Jeremy Tolley: [00:58:59] Yeah. and we can do, you could do everything on this list and more we can go out of our way. We can have great wages, and people are gonna leave. it's just, it's the nature of what happens, particularly in this economy with, the way that work works. These days, people move on and they move on a lot times faster than we would want them to. So having some contingency in place will help avoid desperation.

So even just having. Five or six people that maybe their customers or others, they folks who volunteered for your CSA, things like that you could have on call to know that if I do have someone that quits in the middle of the busy season, there's a couple of people I can call on who, while they may not do the best job, and they may not have all the right training.

These are folks that I can trust to go out there and help me make it through a busy season before I can get somebody else hired. being a little bit more proactive with how you're thinking about staffing.

Diego: [00:59:53] It's a great point. And I think this list, should I really help people refine down what they're looking for or, and like you said, not ensure success, not ensure longevity, but increase your chances of finding the right person.

Who's a fit for your farm and your business. This episode has personally been really helpful for me. I hope it has for other people, for people that want to follow along with your farm, maybe they have comments or questions on this episode. They want to reach out what's the best place to get in touch with you.

Jeremy Tolley: [01:00:29] We are on Instagram at red thread, farm, R E D T H R E a D like string thread farm.

Diego: [01:00:38] All right, I'll be sure to link to that in the notes for this one. Thanks for taking some time to record it.

Jeremy Tolley: [01:00:43] Thank you. I really enjoyed it. And I really hope it's a way that I can help give back to this community. Cause you all have helped me so much on my farm as I started up.

So thanks for the opportunity. There you go.

Diego: [01:00:55] There, you have it, Jeremy Tali on hiring. If you enjoy this episode and you want to reach out to Jeremy and give him a shout out, do so and Instagram, feel free to hit him up with questions or just tell him thanks for taking some time to record this episode today.

One other thing you can do, if you really enjoyed this episode is share it with somebody who you think it could help. I know there's a lot of businesses out there in the farm space right now that are growing. Those businesses are going to inevitably need to hire people. Hiring is a big stress point for a lot of businesses.

If you found this episode helpful for you, share it with a friend who might be looking to hire for their business, it will ultimately help them, the person they eventually hire in. It'll really help me out by getting topics like this out there. I think this is a really important topic. Maybe not the sexiest topic, but one that really matters in a space that's growing rapidly.

So share it with a friend who you think could help. That's all for this one. Thanks for listening until next time. Be nice. Be thankful and do the work.

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