Animal Feed and Nutrition Recruitment

Most of the roles we fill in this sector are commercial. Area and territory sales managers for ruminant feed or livestock nutrition manage a patch of dairy, beef and sheep customers and are expected to grow tonnage. Agricultural sales and account managers look after a portfolio of existing accounts, often including larger farms with complex needs. Animal nutrition sales managers lead a team or a product range and carry a target for the business as a whole.

What separates these jobs is how technical the conversation is. Some roles sell compound feed and blends; others involve ration formulation, forage analysis and on-farm performance advice. We establish where your role sits on that scale so we can judge whether a candidate has the nutrition knowledge to back up the sale.

The hard part of feed sales recruitment is not finding people who can sell. It is finding people who can sell feed in your area, to the type of farm you supply, without breaching a restrictive covenant or losing the trust that keeps customers loyal. A candidate's existing relationships are valuable, but we are careful to understand any restrictions in their current contract before you rely on them.

We look closely at how a candidate builds a territory: how they find new customers, how they handle price pressure when commodity costs move, and how they keep accounts during a difficult year. Qualifications help too. An animal science or agriculture degree, nutrition training, or the SQP qualification where the role includes animal medicines, can all strengthen a shortlist.

Territory and account manager roles usually suit our contingency-based permanent service. National sales managers, commercial directors and senior nutritionists are typically better served by a retained search, given the discretion and depth such appointments need.

Job advertising can work for sales support and graduate-level roles, where enthusiastic applicants are more likely to be actively looking.