Talent in agriculture is becoming more diverse. If you are recruiting, it’s easier than you think to get women in your talent pipeline.
A few months ago, a blog article written by Rebekah Shields caught my attention. Her article was entitled, Unlocking Female Talent: A Strategic Imperative for the Agricultural Sector.
I don’t know Rebekah or the recruitment team she works for in the UK. What I particularly appreciate about her article is that it is tactical. It isn’t a sad story about women being underrepresented in agriculture. It acknowledges this, and then it quickly moves on to practical suggestions on how to improve this. Better yet, she lists relevant female role models in the industry and shares their social media handles to encourage readers (of any gender) to connect.
My own career has spanned the oil and gas industry and technology startups, the last 6 years specifically being in agtech. I have worked in remote parts of Canada in oil sands mining and been the lone female founder pitching to VCs. I am comfortable around men and simultaneously uncomfortable with the state of diversity in agriculture. Combine technology with agriculture, and you can imagine that the talent scale tips increasingly to be male-dominated.
But there is evidence of change.
Recruiting in the woman’s world
In the last couple weeks, real world experience has given me reason to be optimistic about a shift of diverse talent in agriculture.
In my current role as COO at Farmable, I have been deep in recruiting mode. Our team is in the process of hiring a German speaking Sales Manager. At first glance, the talent pipeline for this role looked a bit one-dimensional. We knew we had to look a little deeper to ensure diversity in creating a pipeline of candidates. This effort was relatively small with significant payoff.
Here are 3 specific things we did to ensure our recruitment pipeline was representative of the team we aspire to build:
1. Posted our vacancy specifically in LinkedIn Groups that focused on women in agriculture. I added a credible message encouraging women to apply, and I backed it up with stats on our team’s current gender balance. If you want to try this, here are the groups I found useful but there are country-specific groups you can also use :
2. Networking with Women in Agriculture and AgTech. Reached out to the women in agriculture and agtech that we already knew and said, “Hey, I’m hiring. Who do you know that I should talk to?” At the risk of stating the obvious, women network with women. If you want more women on your team, step 1 is ensure you have women in your network.
Special credit to Julie Escobar, founder at Global Women Fresh, for several introductions. GWF is a great example of a female-led organisation to have on your radar if you want to diversify your talent pipeline.
3. Shared our job posting with the leaders at relevant food & agtech incubators. Industry groups and cooperatives could also be good networking hubs, depending on the specific role. Many of these organisations have leadership roles occupied by women, which is a positive signal. Whether they formally posted the role in their communities or not, varied on the rules of their respective organisations. Regardless, having very well-connected people (many of whom were women) aware of our job opening brought us more diverse connections.
There is one thing we did NOT do. We did not rely on the job advertisement itself to bring us diverse talent. Looking at the talent pool that was generated by our advertisement alone, the gender balance was 83% male, 17% female.
Luckily, we noticed this early on in our process and started to activate the ideas above to improve the diversity of our candidate pool.
Reason for Optimism
After 7 business days of the above ideas, we have nearly a 50/50 gender balance across candidates. Of those selected for first-round interviews, 3 of 7 are women. Our recruitment process will continue for a few more weeks, so it’s too soon to say who gets hired, but I am comfortable that we created the space for diversity in the process.
Beyond the formal first-round interviews we’ve conducted, the networking that resulted from the process gave evidence of the bright, international pack of female talent emerging in agriculture. In just a few days, I have had introductory calls with female agronomists, product managers, and sales executives, many of whom have first-hand experience in agriculture (i.e., dirt under the fingernails). I am convinced that there is a wave of female talent in this industry that is ready to take centre stage and it was easier to tap into than I expected.
If you take one thing from reading this, let it be a nudge of encouragement; there is highly motivated, professional female talent in agriculture.
Diversity at Farmable
Since its inception, diversity has always been a priority at Farmable. Our investors, board members and employees align on diversity being core to our strength. Of 11 full time employees, we represent 7 different nationalities with nearly 50/50 gender balance. In the words of Shields, we see this as a strategic imperative for building a world-class, global business.
Admittedly, investing in diversity early probably makes it easier for us to attract a wide range of talent. With a female co-founder and COO, it may be easier for Farmable to pull in female talent because candidates immediately know they won’t be the only woman at the table. This is likely true and it is also exactly why more women need to be given opportunities to rise up.
From what I’ve seen in the last few days, there is no longer an excuse in this industry not to be hiring female leadership. The talent exists and the businesses that find it first will undoubtedly be better positioned for global success.
