INDEPENDENT NEWS

Jobs service - making life easier for NZ farmers

Published: Mon 2 Jul 2001 02:05 PM
Press release jobs - 1
July 2, 2001
New rural jobs service - making life easier for NZ farmers
New Zealand's first credible national rural employment service has been launched on the Internet. Rural Jobs is the latest innovation from Fencepost.com, the nation's leading agricultural website with more than 150,000 visits each month. Rural Jobs has a range of features to make it easier for rural employers and job seekers to get together - no matter where they are in the country.
"Internet jobs services are among New Zealand's busiest websites and have been hugely successful for urban people," says Fencepost Chief Operating Officer, Alison Andrew. "But until now there hasn't been a service that provides real value for rural New Zealanders.
"Fencepost wants to fill the gap - especially in light of the current shortage of farm workers and skills. The industry needs to be doing all it can to attract young people into farming and help fill the many farm vacancies all over the country."
Designed with support from the Agriculture Industry Training Organisation (Ag ITO), educational institutions and farming groups, Rural Jobs went online during the weekend.
Among many user-friendly tools on Rural Jobs is a "Job Alert" that enables a job seeker to register his or her requirements on the Fencepost site. It then automatically sends an email alert to the person when a job comes up that meets those criteria.
"The Internet is faster and smarter than traditional classified advertising and for about the same cost as you would pay for 20 words, Fencepost gives the advertiser the opportunity to provide detailed information and reach a national audience for up to three months," says Alison Andrew. Rural Jobs is the latest initiative in a raft of farm tools and services launched by Fencepost.com in its bid to create an on-line farming community.
They include:
· Live.ex, the livestock exchange service which has ushered in a new era in livestock trading with many farmers saving thousands of dollars by dealing direct with other farmers rather than going through a stock and station agent. Since its launch in March, close to 900 farmers have registered and more than 150,000 stock including sheep, dairy and beef cattle and deer have been advertised for sale or purchase.
· Fencepost.com Classifieds - launched last December and now attracting almost 8,000 visitors and 400 ads each month with farmers trading everything from farm dogs to utes, horse floats to farm feed.
· A high-tech, on-line calculator which enables dairy farmers to instantly estimate the value of their shares in GlobalCo by entering four basic statistics available from their milk production records. Fencepost.com's GlobalCo information pages attracted thousands of visitors in the build-up to the GlobalCo merger vote.
· Customised health advice for farmers through links with leading New Zealand healthcare website Doctor Global
· Discussion Groups, in which farmers across all agricultural sectors and all parts of the country exchange opinions and information on common farming problems and issues facing the farming sector.
"We're gradually changing the way farmers do business and relate to each other," says Alison Andrew. "Whether farmers want to trade, talk to other farmers or keep up with the latest farming news the Internet is where more and more are turning.
"Fencepost is clearly their first choice, accounting for more than 40 per cent of traffic to agricultural websites - which puts us a country mile ahead of our closest competitors who attract less than 10 per cent.
"The day of the GlobalCo vote was our biggest ever with almost 9000 visits, which reflects the fact that farmers are looking to Fencepost to keep them posted."
Kevin Bryant, Chief Executive of the Agricultural Industrial Training Organisation welcomes Fencepost.com's Rural Jobs initiative. "The shortage of new entrants in the agricultural industry is a major issue in the rural sector. We're leading a range of programmes to bring new people into agriculture and the Fencepost initiative fits perfectly with our current and planned activities with farm employees. It will make it so much easier for rural job seekers and employers to find each other right across the country.
"We commend Fencepost's plans to waive any charges for work wanted ads - that will make plugging in to job opportunities so much easier for school leavers, polytech and university graduates and other job seekers." Alison Andrew points out that other websites have attempted to set up rural jobs services but don't have the volume of users, the number of ads or the technological tools to run the service successfully.
"We have taken a very serious and concerted approach to ensure that Fencepost.com's Rural Jobs succeeds in all those areas. Rural New Zealand deserves the quality of service that urban people are currently enjoying from a range of very successful sites."
To place an advertisement with Rural Jobs, Fencepost users simply log on to Fencepost and type in their own ads.
Payment is easy and secure, using either a credit card or an account with the Town and Country Agri Centres chain of rural merchants. The system automatically generates and emails a GST receipt to the advertiser. Placing an advertisement costs $29.95 incl. GST for an initial one-month period. After that it can be rolled over for up to two additional months at no extra charge.
http://www.fencepost.com
Released for Fencepost.com by pead pr

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