The 2012 North American Ag & Food HR Roundtable was full of industry recruiters saying their businesses are growing and they are ready to hire, as well as university representatives expressing they had great students ready to full those spots. Lori Pence-Barber, Career Services Coordinator for the College of Agriculture at Purdue University, couldn’t agree more with her colleagues. I got a chance to talk with her about the universities perspective on careers in the agriculture industry.

“It’s a very exciting time to be in agriculture and I know we say that all the time. We even got to say that during the recession. This is something I was talking with some people in the industry yesterday about how I was getting phone call after phone call from media outlets and a lot of them were ag related wanting to find the doom and gloom of the recession and asking if we were having a hard time placing students. They were looking for a story that I couldn’t give them. I told them I was really sorry, but we aren’t having problems placing any students.”

“This is a great opportunity for folks like myself to come and network with colleagues. We can share ideas about what we are doing in our own offices, so it’s kind of like we beg, borrow and steal. I like to call it not reinventing the wheel. But also it gives us face time with the industry that we really don’t have during the academic year. In my case I wear many different hats and they want to meet with me right before the career fair or right after. I just don’t have quality time to see them and that is what we get during these two and a half days.”

You can listen to my interview with Lori here: Interview with Lori Pence-Barber

Check out our photo album for the 2012 North American Ag & Food HR Roundtable.