Inside Training: How Drone Footage Displays Real Farm Truck Skills
Attending farm truck training and earning a certificate means nothing without verifiable proof that you can perform the driving techniques learned during your course. That’s where our drone videos come into play. Today’s blog dives into our drone videos, how we shoot them, why we shoot them, and how you can use them to supercharge your H-2A job search.
Why we started using drone footage
Capturing the essence of truck training is tough to do with still photos, ground cameras, or pictures, so we got creative and used drones to record footage of our candidates’ practical training and demonstrations. Simply put, traditional photos don’t capture the movement, techniques, or scale of practical farm truck driving.
There are a few other added benefits of using drone footage to record your truck training techniques, such as:
Drones are perfect for capturing footage of farm truck training involving large equipment and wide spaces
Drones show your skills to employers who want to see real farm truck driving skills in action
Drones help other candidates get a sense of what training actually looks like before arriving
Drone videos of training show what ground cameras miss
There’s no proven way to capture the skills you learn during farm truck training and convey those to potential employers. However, driving a large semi truck lends itself to video proof of your skills. Here’s what our drones capture that ground cameras or in-cab, driver point of view videos miss:
Trailer turning, turning radius awareness, backing, and docking trailers with skill and precision
Equipment spacing, attention to safety zones, and vehicle clearances
Your ability to maneuver around a farm-style environment across various terrains
Situational awareness from a top-down point of view
You can’t accurately capture the magnitude of driving a farm semi using videos shot from the ground or from within the cab as you drive. Instead, we utilize a combination of the different camera angles to paint a full picture of your skills.
How to use video footage for your H-2A profile
Creating an H-2A profile that stands out to employers is a job in itself. You’ll need to list relevant skills, experience, and job references in a way that separates you from other candidates. USA Farm Labor, our H-2A agency partner in America, requires candidates to complete the following sections of their H-2A profile:
Knowledge assessments
Skill assessments
Value assessments
Prior work references
Education history
Work history
It can take several hours to complete your H-2A profile with the required assessments, information, and additional details. Candidates can also create optional CV videos for their online profile. There isn’t a limit to the number of videos you can include with your USA Farm Labor profile. You can link videos from YouTube directly to your profile.
Check out these resume and CV tips for H-2A farm jobs in America
One way to stand out is to create a full video library that speaks to potential employers in the American farming industry. Here are a few benefits of utilizing video footage for your H-2A profile:
Your CV video helps employers get to know you professionally before interviewing you
Drone footage of your truck driving skills is a great way to complement your CV with proof of your skills (talk is cheap, bosses want proof)
Video footage of your driving skills helps potential employers envision how you’ll work for their operation
The idea here is to create a professional profile that speaks to potential employers in American ag. Use short clips of your practical driving techniques that demonstrate the most important skills employers want to see, such as:
Backing and docking
Connecting and disconnecting trailers
Shifting up and down through gears
Maneuvering the truck through tight spaces
Managing different terrains
Keep your clips short and sweet. We recommend using 15-to-30-second clips of your practical truck driving techniques during training. Longer clips tend to lose the viewer’s attention. Similarly, clips that are too short don’t show the full depth of your skillset.
How drone footage helps future candidates
Anyone who has completed the USA Truck Labor training course knows it’s not easy. We’ve intentionally designed our training program to reflect real-world farm driving environments and scenarios. While we can never fully simulate professional farm driving environments as an H-2A worker in America, our course is designed to bring you the most realistic curriculum possible. The only way to accurately convey the program is to include drone footage of the different techniques and maneuvers you’ll learn when you come to USA Truck Labor.
Come to USA Truck Labor for training, and stand out to employers with visual proof of your ability
Talk is cheap. Employers want proof that you can perform the duties of the job. USA Truck Labor is dedicated to putting you in the best position to land an H-2A job. Not only do we teach you the truck driving skills American ag employers need, but we also understand that you need verifiable proof of your skills in action. If you haven’t worked in America before, then gaining experience and nurturing a credible reference is nearly impossible. USA Truck Labor solves that dilemma with our training and Gold Standard verification services.
