J-1 visa holders are trainees or interns who come to the U.S. to learn about a specific business — these cannot be unskilled or casual labor positions. Trainees must meet certain education and work experience requirements, while intern visas are intended for foreign college or university students or recent graduates; Carthage partners with The Ohio State University for these internships. In some countries it can take up to a year before the candidate receives approval.

The hiring process

While there are a number of requirements to meet in doing this, doing so properly means the other steps you need to go through to hire good employees isn’t really more difficult than the process of hiring U.S. citizens. Whether it’s someone who lives a few miles down the road or in another country, our candidates go through a pre-screening, then if we are interested the person will have a full interview with someone in Carthage HR.

If it’s a farm job, a manager from PSM production will also sit in to help assess their qualifications and answer questions about the daily work. This is particularly important for candidate guest workers from Mexico, because even if they have hog farm experience, it might be for an operation of 200-300 animals at most; here, they might be working at a 5,000-head facility. In addition, if the candidate only speaks Spanish, one of our bilingual HR employees is on hand to translate.

One of these bilingual speakers is Nancy, who in addition to her formal expertise, has also been through the guest worker process with a family member. Another part of her job is staying in touch with guest workers ahead of their arrival to help them prepare for consulate visa interviews and, when approved, to travel to the U.S. for training and work assignment.

I say “when approved” because PSM has a very high visa approval rate, but occasionally, there is a denial. When that happens, Nancy checks if we can update and resubmit any paperwork to gain an approval (which often happens). We also debrief every candidate after their consulate interview, successful or not, to learn if any questions have changed and to continue better assisting future candidates.

Nancy is terrific with her mock interviews, not only prepping each visa applicant for their questions but putting them more at ease with the process. Put yourself in their shoes: You want to work in the U.S. to learn, to earn and to better your and often your families’ lives — and often the only thing standing between you and opportunity is someone behind a desk who has the power to approve or deny your visa. It can be quite stressful.

Getting a new hire approved for their visa is just part of the onboarding process. Especially with our H-2A farm workers, we try to help them acclimate as much as possible, as many speak little or no English. For example, Nancy participates in the interviews, then once they arrive they can meet her during orientation and their 10-day initial training at our headquarters.

Think back to any job interviews you’ve had. People often become sort of attached to whomever interviews them for a successful hire, and if that person is also around when they start the job, it can make them feel more confident and comfortable.

Meet them where they are

PSM holds a one-day orientation and 10 days of basic training for new workers, with a graduation at completion, always on a Friday. This is when each person finds out where the farm they will be assigned to for work the following Monday is located and meets their new farm manager. I try to be sure each worker knows at least three other things at this point: where they will now be housed (they stay in a dorm at our headquarters during the two-week training), how to reach their manager and how they will get to their new job on Monday.

Once they begin their new job, we have a checklist of about 100 standard operating procedures each new worker ought to be able to learn by certain deadlines in a year’s employment as benchmarks, and their production and farm managers must sign off on these. This embodies our “tell, show, do” on-the-job training model to help them learn and also gives us insight on specialized skills they may have that a manager can develop.

This is all part of the process of helping them successfully acclimate. Often I will go to nearby Burlington, Iowa, to pick up these new hires at its small airport — most arrive with not much more than a backpack, no other local contacts and not much English. I don’t speak much Spanish, so we mostly communicate with hand gestures and facial expressions until we arrive at the office and they can meet Nancy in person.

I keep in mind that they are putting as much or more trust in me and Carthage to be in this unfamiliar place, as we are in them to benefit our operations. It’s a partnership; they are here to help the swine industry, and we help them learn about raising swine because the U.S. is one of the best countries for that. I usually find if you make the effort to meet employees where they are in their professional journey, so to speak, they’re going to give you what you need.

Live Link: How well do you know ag work visas?