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Horsey Employers/ BO's...questions for you...
Topic Started: Jan 13 2007, 02:02 AM (524 Views)
equusrocks
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Magical Leopluridon
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If you're a BO/BM/Horse related employer,

Where do you go to "look" for your prospective employees?

What traits do you look for?

Are there certain "traits" that you'd prefer but aren't necessary?

How do you "sell" your place to prospective employees/how do you expect them to "sell" themselves??

Just curious. Pondering life changes...have been for a while but I know I have some negatives...overweight, night owl, etc. Just wondering what the "norm" hire is. :huh:
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SadiesMom
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Is the meadow on fire?
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I don't know if this helps, but....I just got a new job at a racing farm and here are some things they look for or frown at. A very important trait is "horse sense". People answer my BO's ads and say they are "very experienced with horses". Then they show up at the farm and start doing stupid things that proves they obviously are not "very experienced". The trainer caught one girl leading 2 yearlings on the same side like dog walking :jaw: These are high strung babies, not to mention expensive future racers. I, too, am out of shape, but as long as you work hard and do things the way they want, you should be fine. I have worked at a lot of barns and everyone does things differently, so find out how they want it done and do it. The "dog walker" lady also was very opinionated about how things should be done and did it her own way - did not go over real well, to say the least.

Anyway, hope this helps, and from your other thread describing your current employment situation, I would definitely encourage a change :)

Good luck!
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equusrocks
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Magical Leopluridon
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Dog walker huh? Yikes. Although I love TB's, I have no desire to do any galloping. I was thinking, with my odd obsessive compulsive horse must be clean personality, maybe I'd like to be a groom. Or stall cleaner. Or something. I really want to do the farrier thing, but that's slow going. I'm not complaining, it's fun learning. Just not one of those things you can jump into.
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equusrocks
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Magical Leopluridon
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PS, thanks for the tips!!! ;) Good l uck with your new job! Sounds fabulous!
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adrienne
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We're on a bridge, Chaaaaaaaaarlie!
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equusrocks
Jan 13 2007, 01:02 AM
If you're a BO/BM/Horse related employer,

Where do you go to "look" for your prospective employees?

What traits do you look for?

Are there certain "traits" that you'd prefer but aren't necessary?

How do you "sell" your place to prospective employees/how do you expect them to "sell" themselves??

Just curious.  Pondering life changes...have been for a while but I know I have some negatives...overweight, night owl, etc.  Just wondering what the "norm" hire is.  :huh:

I am, admittedly, the world's worst hirer.

But, what I have learned:

-Someone who is clean. Presents themselves well.
-Will admit they don't know at least a couple things but seem willing to learn. The foalwatcher I had that said they learned all about foaling in college but actually had never done it hands-on and never felt she needed to learn more. Thus, she became more of a 'watch' person, I had to be present for every foaling and do checks thereafter on the mare and foal. She once called me down after a routine foaling to give the foal an enema! That is the kind of work I hire someone for. Now I want to hear "I've learned about foaling, but I've never foaled out a mare, so you'll have to show me what to do the first couple times then I think I will try to handle routine things myself."
-Asks good questions - shows they can work independently.
-CHECK REFERENCES. I used to not worry about this because I figured that you only use references if they are good and you can legally give someone a scathing reference anyway. Well, long story but I definately will now.

What I no longer get excited about:
-"Extra skills"... I've hired people who can do massages, haul, ride, etc. but none of them seem willing to share those skills without getting paid extra for them. They talk them up in the interview but then expect salary PLUS $$ for their work when it actually comes down to it.
-Tons of experience - the BEST stall cleaner/groom type person I ever had only had 2 years of weekly lessons.
-People who walk in and come up with a bunch of ideas for the place. Even if they are good, I would rather have someone who is willing to stay quiet and observe for several weeks before making suggestions. For the most part, we do things a certain way for a reason...

After 1.5 years of trying to run this place this is what will get a person fired:
1- Fear of horses. This can just be so dangerous.
2- Lack of understanding of priority around the farm. Like, I had a horse that was hard to catch, I had an employee who would go out and whoo that horse and not do the layup work on the racehorses. Or someone who will start cleaning stalls before checking the pasture horse's water.
3- Lying. Lying. Lying. Lying. Not that I don't lie to my boss on occasion, but some people insist on lying about things that are terribly obvious. I went around haying the paddocks one morning (we were busy so I would do this while they cleaned stalls) I found a mare without water. I talked to the employee about it, she claimed she had watered the mare. Apparently the mare had drank an entire tank of water in 15 minutes.
4- Bad communication. I had one employee who would miss work for actually, fairly relevant reasons, HOWEVER, she never could seem to get her phone to call my cell phone. We don't live in the dark ages. I take 5-10 calls a day on my cell, amazingly, she was the only person who made my cell magically disfunction. One morning, she called and HUNG UP on me, that was so obvious. I called her from two different phones after - no answer, but I did get an e-mail from her later in the day. Same employee e-mailed me about being sick... I was out of town... with my cell phone but no computer. I mean, it would be one thing if I had ever told her she COULDN'T take a day, but I always allowed her to do it.
5- People who don't see this job as #1 priority. See extra skills I'm no longer impressed with. More than once those people would come to me and say "I need to leave at xpm because I need to do a massage/ride/haul, etc." Umm... you're on full time salary for a reason ;) I specifically put a rider on salary once to work with the OTTBs. They got $250/week to ride ~15 times. Amazingly enough, I could never get them to *my* farm to ride, they were always doing something at someone else's farm :argh:
6- Playing he said she said. I had three employees last summer who, apparently, hated each other. I didn't care that they hated each other, but they felt the need to bring me into it. Actually, one girl was not in on it, she just got involved in it alot. But yeah, there was always someone stomping into my office saying "x says you said y about this!" and it would be completely untrue. It was usually the same person who always came running to me, finally I told her that if she didn't knock it off *she* was fired (I always suspected her motive was to get someone else fired). Lordy, that was like "Survivor: The Barn" I was glad I was gone a lot last summer, lol.

How I sell this job:
1- I'm really a fairly hands-off manager. I'm gone a lot (I come back here every night but I'm at the track, running around, getting hay, getting feed, etc.) so I expect basic care to happen without me. (Though no one except me knows my schedule, so I can walk in at any time, which keeps enough fear going on that the work gets done)
2- I let the hours be very flexible. In the winter, we might just clean stalls and hang out inside during the day. During the hottests months of the summer, the same thing, but we will come out in the evening and mow.
3- Something different every day.
4- Opportunities to ride. Though I'm not as vocal about this as I used to be. I told a lady that she could ride before I figured out how little she really knew. She always held it against me when I hired a rider and never gave her the chance to ride, but it was a major major safety issue.
5- We have worker's comp here... people get upset that we don't pay cash, that they have to pay taxes, but worker's comp is a big good thing.
6- Employees share a house - all utlities paid.

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equusrocks
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Magical Leopluridon
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adrienne
Jan 15 2007, 12:59 PM




How I sell this job:
1- I'm really a fairly hands-off manager. I'm gone a lot (I come back here every night but I'm at the track, running around, getting hay, getting feed, etc.) so I expect basic care to happen without me. (Though no one except me knows my schedule, so I can walk in at any time, which keeps enough fear going on that the work gets done)

Hi adrienne, and thank you.

I just have one questions about what you wrote...the whole "fear" thing and getting work done.

The job I'm at now is just a factory job. But, we're expected to be able to do our job at its fullest even if the supervisor isn't there. They have always told us, "If you can't run yourselves, we've hired the wrong people..." I guess the idea is that we don't need to "fear" the supervisor because we are confident that we are doing our job and doing it well, sort of like a sense of entrepreneurship I guess. Do you find that it's hard to find that in hiring barn workers? I mean, I guess there are different schools of thought regarding employees, and it's interesting to see the different ideas. I guess maybe the difference is, at our job if they fire one of us, they can find another pretty easily, although they don't like to because of the nature of the skills we acquire and use while we're there. I suppose for barn work it might be different, and maybe that's why so many employers have to really keep after their workers without firing the ones that they should fire, or without searching out the ones that would potentially have a better work ethic.

For example, at the farm I used to work at, there was a girl who was consistently doing really stupid and dangerous things with the horses. She was spoken to on several occasions (the BO was a fairly scary guy...) and still she did it again and again. He just never fired her though, and eventually she quit.

But at work, one guy walked out for half a day. He was in a high priority section of the facotry and was terminated because it's a "no bull" place.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. Mostly, it just seems like a pattern of "scary" BO's/BM's and not so scary "Company" Supervisors, at least in my personal experience. I was just wondering if it was related to the effectiveness of barn workers or the nature of the job/work/employers, etc. Just someting I was pondering. I'm sure you run a wonderful facility, and I don't mean any of this in a negative fashion, I was just noting the differences in personal experiences.
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adrienne
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We're on a bridge, Chaaaaaaaaarlie!
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Oh, I use the fear thing fairly tongue in cheek ;)

But I think the reason why working a barn involves a little more supervision (though I would like people to go completely independantly) is because it is such multifaceted work. If it was JUST cleaning stalls, I would always know if stalls got cleaned or not. But things like, are they actually scrubbing the feed tubs on Monday or just rinsing them? Are they icing the horses legs for 15 minutes... or 5... or at all? I honestly can't tell the difference when I get back from the track or where-ever.

My problem firing people is that we are kept fairly short-staffed around here. If I fire someone, we're screwed until I hire someone else. I usually try to find someone new BEFORE firing the old person, but that takes some time too. Then you're stuck with thinking that the next person might not even be that much better.

Honestly, the number of people, like you, who want to work in a barn setting because they honestly love it are severely limited. Most of the people I've gone through (and not a ton, 4-5) are simply people who have failed at working in the 'real world' and think that working in a barn will be different. It IS different, but you actually have to be *more* motivated.

I had a guy working here who was limited English speaking and he *loved* it here and he worked *so* hard. But honestly, if he had better english skills he could have worked *anywhere* and been sucessful. A good worker is a good worker. He went back to Mexico to be with his family, sad for me, but happy for him, I knew he was ready to go back. So sad for me... :(

~Adrienne
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Little Diva
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You're BANNED!
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As a barn manager in a previous life, I hired about 15 people before I finally found the perfect person. I got her through our local agricultural college that had an equine management program and she had been around horses all of her life. She was shorter than me, more overweight than me, didn't have a whole lot to say during her interview, but it was her calm way around the horses that I really liked.

She never got excited when something went wrong, which it does, never got excited when the day's plans all went awry and could always be counted on to do a good job. She taught me an awful lot about the business. Funny how that works. I learned more about horses and the business and teaching from her than our big time coach and barn owner who were far too busy doing other stuff than the acutal work around the barn.

When interviewing, I always made sure that part of it was actual interaction with the horses, usually bringing one or two in. I never gave the person the nutty ones, usually the older, more sedate dudes who, most of the time, I could trust, and I would watch how they moved, talked, etc. and that would tell me a lot.

Anyway, horse sense is something that I always look for. I think the better phrase would be horsemanship, and a real, honest caring way about the person, not just for the horse, but for the people as well; especially in a boarding facility.

Hope this ramble is of some help!
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MHM
Schooling
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High priority for me is someone who SHOWS UP when they're supposed to be there. I don't mean that they have to punch the time clock at a certain hour, but basically I expect people to be at work as scheduled unless they're in the hospital. Literally.

If an office worker doesn't show up to do the allotted paperwork, the papers will wait until the next day, no harm done. The horses, not so much.

People who regularly call in "sick" or have "car trouble" or whatever should not work in a field where the animals rely on them for care. Also, if the show starts at 8:00, and the person shows up late, and a horse misses the first class as a result: :mallet:

I guess the shorter version of that is, I want somebody who is responsible. I can teach a person a lot about horses if I need to, but I can't change their personality or their work ethic. Unfortunately. :soapbox:

Boy, do I LOVE these smilies!! :cheer:
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MHM
Schooling
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BTW, the two jobs that come to mind immediately for a night-owl who likes horses are braider and night watch person.

Braiders can make a LOT of money, but it's a pretty hard job. I don't know the pay scale for night watch types, but you would be around many horses and not many people.
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AC & Ty
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Shunnnnn the unbeliever. Shunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
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Great topic, as I am searching for the position right now.

What I'm running into is "shared housing"...

I have a finace, a house full of furniture, a dog, and 3 cats (which are indoor/outdoor cats). While I do have all that, I am highly qualified. I am also giving up my amateur status and beginning teaching again to make myself more marketable. I also work in a plant/factory right now, and I have called in sick just to be at the barn!

Of all my 32 years, I have tried to get a "regular" job...but I always end up back at the barn! :P

To the BO's...is all my baggage REALLY scary? :sigh:
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varider
Shunnnnn the unbeliever. Shunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
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Having been on both sides here are some of my thoughts for what they are worth...

As an employer I want someone who is reliable and wants to be here. While I don't require a certain number of years time commitment, except you have to sign a contract for the full coming school year, I will look much more favorably on someone who has a track record of sticking with a job for a long time. If they are young and don't have a track record, I want to see a history of summer employment with the same barn or company, or a recommendation that states they are looking for a long term situation. I'm willing to put up with baggage if needed to get the right person. I offer a great situation including benefits, so it's worth it to show me you want to settle in for a long time.

As an employee, when I looked for jobs I wanted to see an employer that I could talk to about the position and discuss opportunities for the job to change and grow as I grew. I tried to be sure to let them know that I was willing to learn and wanted the chance to further my skills and experiences.
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