5 Hiring Mistakes That Cost Food Companies the Best Candidates
by Jake Steele, Bradsby Group
I recruit for the food industry every single day. I talk to hiring managers at food manufacturing plants, food processing facilities, and CPG companies across the country. Unfortunately, I hear the same thing repeatedly: “We just can’t find good people.”
Here’s the truth. In most cases, the people are out there. The problem isn’t the talent pool. The problem is what’s happening on the company side. After years of recruiting in the food and beverage space, I’ve seen the same five mistakes kill hiring pipelines at companies of all sizes. If your food company is struggling to land quality candidates, there’s a good chance at least one of these is the reason why.
1. Your Hiring Criteria May Be Too Narrow
A resume comes across a hiring manager’s desk. The candidate has 8 out of 10 qualifications, strong background in food manufacturing, good tenure, solid leadership experience and more. The issue is they don’t have experience with one specific piece of equipment. Just like that, the resume goes straight to the “no” pile without a single conversation.
That’s not being selective. That’s eliminating your best candidates before you ever get to meet them.
The reality is that a perfect candidate who checks every single box on your wish list almost never exists. The best hires I’ve seen in the food industry are the ones where a hiring manager took a chance on a candidate who was 80% of the way there and gave them the opportunity to prove themselves.
As recruiters, we can find needles in a haystack. That’s what we do. But when hiring managers are open to strong candidates who bring most of what they need rather than holding out for a perfect match that may never come, the process moves faster and the results are consistently better.
If someone has the core skills and the right work ethic, get them on the phone. A 20-minute conversation will tell you more than any resume ever will.
2. Your Interview Process Is Too Slow
In recruiting, speed matters more than almost anything else.
The food manufacturing industry is competitive right now. Quality candidates at the plant manager, operations director, quality assurance, and engineering level are fielding multiple opportunities at once. If your interview process takes four, five, or six weeks from the first conversation to the offer, you’re going to lose those people to companies that move faster.
The companies I work with that consistently land the best talent have one thing in common. They move quickly and decisively through the process. These companies schedule interviews within days, they give feedback between each stage within 48 hours, and when they find the right person, they don’t wait around to make the offer.
If your process requires four rounds of interviews, a panel discussion, a personality assessment, and a two-week debrief before anyone makes a decision, you don’t have a hiring process. You have a candidate elimination process.
3. Your Salary Data Is Misaligned
Compensation in the food industry has shifted a lot in the last few years, and a lot of companies haven’t caught up. They’re still relying on salary surveys from years ago or benchmarking against what they paid the last person in the role three years ago.
The market has moved. Candidates know what they’re worth and are talking to recruiters, comparing offers, and getting more access to salary information than ever before.
I always encourage my clients to invest in current salary data and to have honest conversations about compensation early in the process. Nothing wastes more time for everyone involved than going through a full interview process only to lose a candidate because the offer was never going to be competitive in the first place.
4. You Won’t Offer Relocation
A huge number of food manufacturing facilities, processing plants, and distribution centers are in rural or semi-rural locations. That’s just the nature of the industry. But the talent these companies need, like experienced plant managers, directors of operations, quality and food safety leaders, and engineers, often don’t live within driving distance of those facilities.
The local talent pool in these areas is limited. Sometimes it’s nonexistent for the level of role you’re trying to fill, and if your company isn’t willing to offer a relocation package, you’ve just eliminated a significant number of qualified candidates before the search even starts.
Relocation is an expense but compare it to the cost of leaving a critical leadership role open for six months. A relocation package is an investment in getting the right person. In the food industry, the right person in a plant leadership role can impact millions of dollars in production, efficiency, and safety.
5. You’re Not Giving Your Recruiter Enough Feedback
When I send a candidate to a hiring manager and the response is just “set up an interview” or “pass,” I have almost nothing to work with. I don’t know what you liked. I don’t know what you didn’t like. I don’t know how to adjust the next round of candidates to get closer to what you’re actually looking for.
The companies that hire the best people are the ones that give detailed, specific feedback at every stage of the process. Something like, “We like this candidate because of their experience leading a multi-line production environment and their background in USDA-regulated facilities.” Or “We’re passing on this one because they don’t have enough experience managing teams over 50 people and we need that from day one.”
That kind of feedback is gold. It tells me exactly how to sharpen the search, what to focus on, and what to let go of. It turns a good recruiter into a great one because now I’m not guessing.
The Common Thread
Every one of these five issues has the same root cause: the hiring process is working against you instead of for you. The food industry is full of strong, experienced professionals who want to make an impact. If your company is too selective on paper, too slow to act, too far behind on comp, unwilling to relocate, or too vague with feedback, those candidates are going to end up somewhere else.
At Bradsby Group, I work with food companies across the country to fix exactly these problems. We don’t just send resumes. We partner with hiring teams to build a process that attracts and lands the best people in the industry.
If your food company is struggling to hire, let’s talk. Sometimes the fix is simpler than you think.
