A new dating-style appto track down prospective seasonal workers has partnered with agricultural employment firm Hops Labour Solutions in a bid to recruit UK residents this season.
The government announced this week that the Pick for Britain campaign would not go ahead in 2021 as it did last year. The government said it had dropped the scheme in favour of a more targeted recruitment drive involving the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) which runs UK Job Centres.
However, some fear this couldleave food and farming businesses with potential shortfalls in their labour supply.
Offering an alternative means of recruitment, the Seasonaljobs.io app and Hops have joined forces to help growers recruit the seasonal workers they need.
Hops’ new MD Jimmy Davies has over 20 years of experience in providing seasonal workers to the UK industry. “We believe that with the correct processes, belief and commitment, UK residents can be valuable assets in any business,” he said.
“We see our partnership with Seasonal Jobs as a key part of improving the effectiveness of recruitment processes and continues the integration of technology into our business. “
SeasonalJobs.io is a mobile and web app built by the Cropdesk Technologies team, led by David Trehane, a blueberry farmer of over 30 years.
The app has been partly funded by Innovate UK through their Sustainable Innovation Fund which seeks to relieve the impact of Covid-19.
Seasonaljobs.io uses a novel approach and technology to automatically match key requirements of a labour user with the profiles of jobseekers. It presents the employer with a pre-filtered list of applicants to avoid cold calling and ensure a higher quality of applicant.
The app also aims to manage the expectations of applicants of what typical jobs really involve through videos and web content, reducing employee churn and increasing retention.
Although tens of thousands of Britons applied for thousands of roles in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic in 2020, few actually went to work on the farms.
There are various reasons for this, including the burden on time pressed business owners in dealing with hundreds of applications; the unrealistic image of what recruits would be doing; and the fitness required.
“As a grower myself, I’ve felt the pain of dealing with hundreds of job applicants and trying to sift through them to find good additions to our team,” Trehane said.
“From the outset, we wanted to make a difference and to achieve that we had to do things differently ourselves. We see our partnership with Hops as a natural fit ofcomplementary businesses serving different parts of the same process and I’m excited to be working together.”
A full product demo is available on request and the app is free to create a profile or post jobs on. There are various levels of service available up to fully managed agency provision.
