Look for These 3 Skills When Hiring Your Next Ag Manager

A good hire is what every employer strives for. The right candidate will help your business grow, help you accomplish your goals, and boost team morale and productivity. They are going to be invested in the success of the company as well as their success within the company and will help you deliver on your promises to clients. They are worth waiting for or seeking out proactively. Even if you are not in desperate need of a new employee right now, it’s not a bad idea to draft your fantasy new hire list for when the opportunity strikes. Here are three skills to look for to make sure your next ag manager has the ability to drive your business forward.

3 Skills Managers Should Have

1. Decision-Making Skills

A strong hire can make good decisions quickly and efficiently. They are committed to taking responsibility for their actions, and the actions of their team, because they know the buck stops with them. A confidence in their ability to make decisions, based on information and data, in high-pressure situations is critical to high-quality decision-making skills.

To decide whether your interviewee has these skills, focus your questions on providing sample scenarios and asking how they would address an issue that might occur on the job. Exercises such as this provide them the opportunity to walk you through their thought process so you can see how and why they might make their decisions. This will help you better understand how they might react in similar situations as an employee, and help you decide whether they have the right decision-making skills for the position.

2. Communication and Teaching Skills

The most successful candidates can communicate with and even teach others around them. Teaching skills might not seem like a staple quality, but those hires who are unable to communicate new processes or insights effectively are often unable to motivate and engage their team. A successful leader can identify gaps in the skill sets of their team, and then teach individuals how to fill those voids to create a better, more well-rounded team.

To see whether a job candidate can lead through teaching, ask for an instance where they have taught a colleague something. Ask them to describe why they felt it was necessary to share their knowledge, how and what they taught their co-worker, and how the team dynamic changed because of the sharing of knowledge. This will not only help you evaluate whether they are, in fact, a good teacher, it will also show whether their teaching had the type of positive impact good leaders are built on.

3. Good Cultural Fit

Hiring a strong candidate who is also a good cultural fit can go a long way in improving productivity, team morale and the overall success of the project. How can you tell, as a hiring manager, if a candidate is a good fit culturally during the interview? Identifying a cultural fit is really a judgment call based on a candidate’s response to multiple questions. There are certain questions that stretch the candidate’s ability to be objective and self-critical. The response to such questions often provides a good insight into a candidate’s ability to fit in with the team.

Some such questions include asking the candidate, in their opinion, what do their colleagues think is their biggest developmental opportunity. This question forces the candidate to think about their traits from the perspective of others around them. It also provides you, the hiring manager, with important insights into the candidate’s ability to be self-critical. Another good question to help evaluate cultural fit includes asking a candidate to describe a project where things didn’t go as planned and how the candidate dealt with it.

Are You Hiring?

Once you’ve evaluated a candidate for their decision-making skills, communication skills, and cultural fit, you should feel confident about your hiring decision. Did the potential Ag Manager check all the boxes? Or was something missing? For help finding the right fit for your ag company, contact the experts at Ag 1 Source today.