Agronomist, Multiple High Street Retailer

We go back to university to learn all about the science of agronomy.

We love difficult to fill and unusual positions to work on. This assignment to find an Agronomist for a well known high street food and clothing retailer was challenging, fun and educational!

The brief

For the uninitiated (like us), Agronomy is the study of crops and how they are grown to get the best results. This retailer has always had a good reputation for its food offer and they had been struggling for some time to find the rarest of retail positions, Agronomists!

 

 

What does an Agronomist do?

Interestingly, that was our first question too. Well an agronomist is rather like a quality controller of vegetables. This person is responsible for making sure the growers are getting the right yield, colour, size and of course flavour out of the crops. More than this the Agronomist also needs to be completely up to date with all UK and European food safety legislation.

 

 

What we did

Like some of the produce they study, Agronomists unfortunately, do not grow on trees. In fact we soon discovered through our network of retail contacts that it is such a specialist field that not all food retailers have such positions. The retailers instead take independent advice or pass responsibility onto the growers.

 

 

Back to University

Having identified only a handful of possible candidates within the growers and wholesalers we needed to do a little lateral thinking and take a new approach. We looked again at what was essential within the brief and the most important requirement was a scientific degree in the study of agriculture.

We knew we were looking for professionals who at some point had qualified, more than likely, within one of the UK universities specialising within agriculture.

Our first priority then was to identify the leading universities within this field and establish who the heads of department were at each establishment. We then approached professors rather than retailers and asked them for their advice.

These professors were a fantastic help. They explained the qualifications, the degree of qualification and which organisations utilised these skills. They also gave us detailed information on individuals who had qualified through the university, what their current skill set was and how we could get in touch with them.

It should be said at this point, that we are only ever able to get this level of co-operation by being extremely courteous, professional and assuring complete confidentiality.

 

 

Our Agronomists

Our chat with the professors led us to a dozen well qualified prospects. As usual, however, our eventual placed candidate was not one of these twelve. Through a process of pre-screening, interviewing and then eliminating unsuitable candidates by mutual agreement, we were able to continually ask for new recommendations. This process led us to the perfect candidate. He was working within an international horticultural research company, was qualified at one of the leading UK agricultural universities and had an exceptional track record within agronomy.