Promoting From Within Can Be Rewarding

Marc Arnusch has employed several foremen on the farm, but when his nephew-in-law decided to focus on growing his own operation, Arnusch knew he needed a genuine farm manager.

"I wear a lot of different hats," the Keenesburg, Colorado, grower says. In addition to growing wheat and barley for seed, breweries and distilleries, plus other grains, Arnusch runs a water company and is bringing a mixed-use development to his town. "To do right by the farm, we needed someone in that leadership role."

Arnusch wanted someone to not only supervise and execute planting, irrigating and harvesting, he needed someone to take over the planning, purchasing and business relationships of the farm.

He crafted a detailed job description and hired a recruiting firm to help him attract candidates and vet resumes. Ten people visited the farm to interview for that role and a technician opening.

The first farm manager he hired lasted three months.

"It was one of those things that we -- gosh darn it -- we made all the right moves. We did our homework," he says, adding there are some things you just can't learn about someone in an interview. "We were slow to hire, but then we were very quick to fire because he put our farm at risk" after violating company policies, Arnusch says.

As it turns out, he was doubly deceived: Arnusch had inadvertently hired his next farm manager, Clayton Stille, for the technician position.

"He somewhat sandbagged us in the interview process because he was being too humble," Arnusch says. "We realized early on we had those two young men in the wrong roles. As it turns out, we were blessed the situation happened, and we were able to promote Clayton."

DON'T UNDERSELL YOURSELF

A 23-year-old Iowa native, Stille worked on a variety row-crop and livestock operations during high school and then spent several years managing construction projects, including traveling the U.S. building transmission lines.

Stille says he was somewhat reserved during his interview for the technician position.

"I didn't feel that a lot of my skills and qualifications would even pertain to the job description, and quite frankly, a lot of them didn't," he says. He had the mechanical skills, but it was hard to see how his experience determining whether to buy or lease construction equipment, and what kind of insurance a project needed would translate to a technician position. He hadn't seen the farm manager listing and probably wouldn't have applied if he had.

"I still should have been up front with Marc and Jill -- they should have known what I was capable of," he says.

Stille admits his job search was influenced by his primary goal: to marry his long-distance girlfriend. Achieving that goal meant finding a job in Colorado, where the couple wanted to settle.

"I was more worried about being able to marry my wife than the job," he says. When he saw the online listing, he looked up the farm online and called directly. He wanted to relocate so badly that the reduced responsibilities and pay cut didn't matter.

AgHires founder and CEO Lori Culler says most successful relocations are regional or involve moving closer to family, but they're happening more often than in the past few years. Four of the last five farm managers her firm helped hire relocated for the job.

Convincing the right person to relocate often starts online. More than 70% of candidates will research potential employers online before they even apply, according to a survey her firm conducted of nearly 700 job seekers.

MATCH THE MINDSET

The Arnusches needed to leave the farm for a few weeks in June 2024, but they had noticed troubling behavior with their first farm manager, so they talked to Stille about what needed to get done.

"We were mid-swing of it," Stille recalls. They were cutting hay, preparing machinery for wheat harvest, irrigating, spraying and selling corn. "They put a lot of trust in me, and I take a lot of pride in that. Respectfully, this farm is Marc and Jill's, but I like to run it as if it's my own, because I hold myself to the highest standards I can."

That's exactly the entrepreneurial mindset Arnusch was looking for in his farm manager, even though it didn't come through Stille's early interviews.

"Make sure you have a lot of patience in this process," he says, adding that they were really impressed by a few candidates' initial interviews only to uncover things in later visits that weren't well-matched.

No matter how busy it is on the farm, it's worth taking your time throughout the process, Arnusch says. He learned a lot about himself and the farm in the process of writing a job description, and while it may be controversial, he suggests seeking out candidates beyond friends and family.

"We've had success hiring family. We've not had success hiring family, and we've had various levels of success hiring friends," he says. "Hire for character and develop the competency later on. Build your team based on what your needs truly are after you've written the job description."

PLAN FOR SUCCESS

Arnusch outlined what success looked like in the first five days, first two weeks, first month and so on, including measurable, specific metrics.

He structured the onboarding process to emphasize general knowledge of the farm's people, priorities and policies. Then it rolls up to an understanding of the fields and equipment, and then to the neighbors, vendors and other relationships.

"It takes close to a year to fully onboard a person so that they really understand what we do and how everything flows," Arnusch says.

Once he got over the shock of how much work goes into onboarding a new hire, Arnusch found he enjoyed how it retrained his own thought process.

"I think my biggest mistake is I assume too many things are just common sense. It's maybe not as common as you think, and that's not a reflection of the individual. That's a reflection of, it's all in my head, and it's not out there for everybody else to see."

Stille appreciates Arnusch's approach: There are no bad questions, and everything is a teaching moment. "To a young entrepreneur and dream-chaser like myself, that's everything you could ever ask for," Stille says.

CULTURE OVER COMPENSATION

Most job seekers expect to see compensation in a job listing, and pay isn't ranked in the top five factors they consider when evaluating a job offer, according to Culler's research. Nearly half of respondents rated culture at the top of their list.

She still recommends discussing pay early in the interview process to avoid mismatched expectations. Fortunately, the post-COVID era of runaway wage gains seem to be at an end, and Culler says annual pay increases are now back in the range of 3%.

There's a perception that farm work lacks work-life balance, and yet family-run and family-focused businesses are perceived as highly desirable places it work, Culler says. While busy seasons are expected, there's potential to offer extra vacation or reduced hours during slow seasons to compensate

"Five years ago, I had a hard time even spelling culture," Arnusch says. "Now, it's at the heart of everything we do."

The farm emphasizes family, community, work-life balance and entrepreneurship, and backs it up with policies that support employees who want to coach youth sports or run their own businesses during their downtime, for example.

Part of Marc's compensation plan for Stille includes a home as well as space for personal projects. His project involved bringing in a flock of sheep -- the first animals to inhabit Arnusch's farm. Now that Stille's been around for a year, he's considering raising beef cows to sell locally.

Stille says he's excited for all the opportunities this job opened up. "If you don't align with the culture, it's never going to work," he says. "Then it's just a job, and you're just a paycheck."

Arnusch says it's exciting to see the ways Stille is growing as a leader and a manager. But, they've also grown to regard each other as family. Stille and his wife, Hallie, got married on the farm last November.

"You'll know when your culture is right. You will feel it," he says. "It's one of the greatest feelings you'll ever have when your team really comes together, and they start all pulling in the right direction."

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