What if, rather than asking candidates to send their CV for a specific position, companies reversed the process and offered their own CV to potential candidates by highlighting their values and their projects? Since the end of January, around twenty agri-food companies representing numerous brands have been posting their CVs on the site CV-inverse.fr. In a standard format, they present their experiences, their achievements, their commitments. Interested candidates send their own resume through the site to one or more brands.
About ten days after the launch of this initiative, five hundred documents had already been filed. At present, the rhythm varies between twenty and thirty per week. In a sector that is struggling to recruit, it is already a success. The idea of the “inverted CV” was formulated during a collaborative workshop organized in September 2022 by the “To feed tomorrow” community., created in 2015 by Sylvain Zaffaroni and Marion Mashhady with the ambition of “collectively reconstruct the French agri-food system in a sustainable way”.
The community regularly brings together executives from around twenty groups and brands in the agri-food sector: St Mamet, Arterris, D’Aucy, Candia, Savéol, Cérébos, etc. During meetings in the form of thematic workshops, they share their concerns and collectively seek solutions. The reverse CV was born at the end of one of these days devoted to the shortage of candidates, which affects certain trades in the sector. “The message we broadcast on LinkedIn announcing the launch of the operation was viewed 200,000 times in one day and generated a site audience of approximately 10,000 daily visits from day one”welcomes Sylvain Zaffaroni.
A structural shortage
In the agri-food sector, recruitment difficulties linked to the lack of candidates are not new, but they have worsened. “To a structural shortage, which has lasted for more than twenty years, is added a temporary shortage linked both to the Covid pandemic, which has dried up the flow of seasonal migrants, and to the complexity of the ecosystem, because the production sites are often located in villages, which requires candidates to find accommodation and have a vehicle”says Mr. Zaffaroni.
The structural shortage can be explained by the lack of training offered by the National Education and by the level of diplomas and certifications now required to exercise the professions of breeders, farmers or market gardeners. However, the reverse CV does not target the technical trades of production, breeding or harvesting, although they are particularly scarce. In these professions, recruitment is mainly done through Pôle emploi or temporary work agencies, through internal promotion or from technical schools for work-study students.
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