By any measure, the 9th AgCareers.com North American Ag HR Roundtable was a big success and next year will likely be even bigger and better.
I talked with Emily Gray with the University of Tennessee College of Ag Sciences and Natural Resources who has attended every one of the nine roundtables. “This is a very valuable event,” she told me. “It gives us as career service professionals from the universities a great opportunity to network with companies who hire our students. We’re always impressed year after year with the variety of companies who attend, the interest they have in our students and the number of companies we’re able to network with.”
Listen to my interview with Emily here: Emily Gray, University of Tennessee
There were 90 companies in attendance at the event this year, the most ever by far according to AgCareers.com, with a wide variety ranging from precision agriculture, to seed companies, biotechnology, and even artificial insemination.
Pioneer is one company that has supported the Roundtable from the beginning, hosting three of the nine events at company headquarters in Iowa, including the very first one. I didn’t get a chance to interview them – but here is a photo of a few of their representatives – Alan Roberts, Tom Drake who conducted one of the breakout sessions, and Human Resources Manager Cindy Heser.
Finally, I interviewed the sole international participant at the Roundtable, Mick Hay of the Australia-based Rimfire Resources – but I somehow didn’t get a photo of him. No matter, you’ll enjoy his Aussie accent in the interview!
Mick says Rimfire is a recruitment and consulting business specializing in agribusiness – kind of like a down under AgCareers. “Not as much an on-line model as AgCareers, but we’ve got a relationship where we took the AgCareers site and launched that in Australia,” Mick says. He was glad to be able to attend the Roundtable and get some new ideas to implement back home.
Listen to my interview with Mick here: Mick Hay, Rimfire Resources