With the 2023-24 summerfruit season fast approaching, here is a list of resources and advice to support employers as you recruit workers and prepare for harvest:
Handpicked Crew’s attraction campaign will continue to support employers during the upcoming harvest. The focus of the campaign, as it has been in previous years, is to attract various workforce cohorts into our seasonal workforce, with a special focus on students, backpackers, and international and New Zealand travellers.
All job seeker traffic is directed to PickNZ so get your ads up now!
Handpicked Crew directs job seekers to the PickNZ Job Board. Employers, please remember to visit the PickNZ Job Board and register your business in preparation for the coming season, or check that your business’s details are correct. This site gives seasonal employees and jobseekers looking to work in horticulture a great new place to find jobs and is the result of the horticulture sector coming together to develop a resource specifically tailored for people wanting to find seasonal work opportunities in horticulture.
For any questions about the PickNZ job board, please email labour@summerfruitnz.co.nz.
Handpicked Crew Website – All summerfruit growers in any region can be listed on the Handpicked Crew website by emailing labour@summerfruitnz.co.nz. This is a place for job seekers to find out a little about you and then be directed to your website/application page.
Employers – please remember to check the details on Employer Listings-Handpicked Crew that are currently posted on your business, and please let us know if anything needs updating.
employer listings - handpicked crew
Opportunity Grows Here
Handpicked Crew is again being supported by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) this year, with its nationwide Opportunity Grows Here (OGH) campaign. The OGH campaign will be promoting season jobs via the PickNZ job board.
Older New Zealanders
Handpicked Crew and PickNZ will continue to target the older New Zealand cohort, sometimes known as ‘Grey Nomads’, is via the New Zealand Motorhome and Caravan Association, via different platforms such as social media pages, members newsletters, and magazine articles.
University job boards
Handpicked Crew also recommends that employers consider promoting your seasonal jobs on Student Job Search, and Uni talent. Uni talent is a national wide job board that is connected directly to student portals.
For employers wishing to register a booth for the University of Otago careers expo on Wednesday 13 September, go here:
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
or contact graduate.recruitment@otago.ac.nz
Handpicked Crew social media pages
Handpicked Crew's social media pages will continue to promote seasonal jobs and the regions. If you have a social media page, head along to Handpicked Crew and follow us. Please also send labour@summerfruitnz.co.nz any posts you have created on your platforms so that we can share them on our page.
Crew Cards – Handpicked Crew will run our usual incentives programme with businesses in the region offering deals and discounts to all seasonal workers that take on work in participating Handpicked Crew regions.
Handpicked Crew webinars (recorded in 2022)
During 2022, we put together a series of webinars to assist growers to attract, retain, and grow a skilled and productive workforce. The webinars support growers to enhance their HR practices, and to help protect and lift the reputation of the horticulture industry as a great place to work. They take around 10-20mins to watch each, and cover the following topics:
- How to Attract, Recruit, and Retain your people - Steph Holloway
- How to be a better leader of people – Steph Holloway
- Recruiting in the current climate and change in the workforce – Lee Astridge, HR
- Seasonal Hiring – Kris Robb, Gretchen McNally, Genevieve Griffin-George
You can find these webinars in the Summerfruit NZ Portal under Labour/Recruitment & HR Webinars.
Checklist for employers:
- Get in touch with your previous employees including backpackers and students.
- Advertise future work opportunities on backpacker, student job boards/webpages or Facebook pages and PickNZ. Ask them to fill in an Expression of Interest (EOI) form and use social media so you can get back to them with updated information on your vacancies.
- Update your business's online presence – is your website attractive and accurate? Update your unique value proposition, and employment page, add FAQs or a work conditions page, check your contact details, and write some good news stories to add to your social media posts during the season.
- Organise supervisory skills and/or pastoral care training for your full-time employees.
- Review your HR processes in preparation for a flood of applicants closer to the season.
- Set up automated or templated email responses to speed up your response times when it gets busy, even if you are just acknowledging that you’ve received the applications or enquiries.
- Draft some newsletter/direct email content for your potential employees outlining timings and your recruitment/employment process this coming season which you can send out as the season gets closer.
We’re here to help, so please contact us at labour@summerfruitnz.co.nz with your workforce-related questions.