OTM 5: How to start building a career as a food safety professional

Summary

Everyone needs to start somewhere.  The first level in building your career as a food safety and quality professional is known as the novice level.  In this context, a novice is someone who has an interest to learn and know more but has no skill foundation within the food industry. This can be equally daunting and frustrating for a newcomer.

Welcome to Episode 5 of Off the Menu. Tune in, or read on, to find out more on what the novice level means in terms of knowledge, skills, attributes, and work experience.

Episode 5 Highlights

Adapted Podcast Transcription

Here is a transcript of what we spoke about in this episode.  Both Pete and I have a lot of fun talking together so if there is anything in the transcript that doesn't make sense, listening to the actual podcast may put the words into context. Remember, don't take life too seriously.....and have a laugh 🙂

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Amanda:  Welcome back Peter to Off the Menu.

Peter:  Hello Amanda.

Amanda:  We are in to about episode five now.

Peter:  Made it to five!

Amanda:  Made it to five and we haven't killed each other yet. We're doing well. We're going to start in this next lot by looking at now that you've got the job, because that's what we’ve reviewed in the previous episodes – we looked at how to get the job, how to get into the job and now you're in the job and we're going to look at how you build your career, your skills, your attributes, and your experience to be the best food safety professional you can be.

Peter:  Yeah, that's right. I think we're going to unpack the career pathway of a food safety person or a food safety professional. And starting from the beginning we'll work our way up to what is a professional.

The first step on the food safety professional ladder

Amanda:  Right. Well let's start off Pete. What's the first step in the ladder? Where do we start?

Peter:  Well firstly we come in at the novice level. What does that really mean? A novice is someone who has an interest in the industry and someone who wants to learn more or know more about the industry but has no foundation within the industry. We’ll be breaking this down in terms of knowledge, skills, attributes and work experience. As we move up through the different levels of professionalism or mastery, we'll keep going back and using these same headings.

Amanda:  Right. So that's good. That'll keep us on the same terms. You can find out whoever those people who are listening and where you slot into, you might be at the beginning of your career, you might be towards the end of your career, you might be looking to advance, or you might have just come in from another industry

Peter:  You might be looking to hire someone.

Amanda:  Or hire someone to be a consultant auditor. This will cover generally all professionals working in the food industry now.

Peter:  Absolutely.

Amanda:  From our first one we said is going to be novice level. We’ve all been there.

Peter:  Tell me about one of your experiences, Amanda. Where did you kick off your food safety or your food and food industry experience?

Amanda:  Initially in the food industry I was working for, I think I've said on previous episodes, I was working as a checkout chick for a retailer, a supermarket retailer. Scanning people's items, you know, that was kind of it, taking money, being cheerful because being a checkout chick, you're always cheerful.

Peter:  Wow. There we go.

Amanda:  That’s where I started. But actually, before that I was doing, like we used to go out for dinner with my parents, and I would be running around even as a seven or eight-year-old waitressing. I'd be picking up plates and going and putting them on one table. I would just get up and do that. I think I always probably had that side of me that I wanted to work in the food industry. I didn't want to be a waitress for the rest of my life, but when you're seven or eight and your parents just let you do whatever you want in a restaurant…

Peter:  Seemed fun at the time didn’t it?

Amanda:  It did until you had to do it and actually get paid for it and then it wasn’t so much fun.

Peter:  That's also something to consider about being a novice is quite often you might be doing work experience, working in the industry without pay because you have a genuine interest in the industry. A lot of people will come into the industry just on work experience.

Amanda:  Absolutely. It could be through a formal work placement program based here in Australia and one of the things after you don't have a job, you have to go and do certain activities to show and build your employment skills. They may send you out to places like that where you can start actually building some level of experience, skill and knowledge around certain processes that are then transferable into whatever industry that you want to go into.

What you do and don’t know about the job

Peter:  What do you think as well, you knew about the process of working in the food industry when you felt like, if you had to think about the knowledge that you went into the job with, what do you think you knew about food production or food retail food handling and let alone food safety?

Amanda:  At that point? I don't think I really knew anything about that. I was doing home economics at school which is cooking from year eight. It was a mandatory subject that we had to do back in the day.

Peter:  I remember doing that one too.

Amanda:  Me being way younger than you, so you would remember it. It was probably just at the beginning of my age. Yes. So doing home economics. So we were learning certain things around storage and preparation practices and food safety. Then in a very, probably not so formalised but formal manner, if that makes any sense. I think then when I worked for the retailer, it was one training that I do remember quite vividly is how to identify different fruits and vegetables at the checkout. But I don't actually remember any type of food safety training per se, but I do remember that the identification of a leek.

Peter:   Good for you as opposed to what, a carrot?

Amanda:  Because they look the same.

Peter:  Absolutely. Well, my very first job in the food safety industry was shovelling icing sugar into boxes.

Amanda:  Off the ground?

Peter:  Well it was actually icing mix. It was, wasn't even just the sugar, it was like a fondant mix and it was really thick and really heavy. And it came in about 300-kilogram batches and these big stainless-steel vats that rocked up and they gave me a little tiny shovel and I spent my entire days shovelling this icing mix into boxes that went out to commercial bakeries or bake houses or cake decorating places. That was my very close role.

Amanda:  How old were you then?

Peter:  I think I was 19 at that point. It was a, it was just paid work to get me through university. Basically. I did this work through an agency and they used to send me out to all manner of food production facilities. And this was the very first one.

Amanda:  When you went through that process, was there any type of review of what your current level of knowledge and skills were to shovel? Fondant?

Peter:  I remember two things from that place. One was being taught how to use their scale. I put the right amount in the box. I remember one guy coming up to me because I was promoted from shovelling icing mix to cleaning down the plant where they were mixing the icing mix. I remember this one lesson this guy gave me, which was how to use a broom to clean down the, checker plate walkways that were surrounding the mixing machines. I don't think he was doing it to be helpful. I think he was doing it to be quite facetious actually. They're the two things I remember in my very first job in the food industry.

Amanda:  It's probably a bit like when you start off in the building industry and the boss sends you off to get a left-handed hammer or chicken paint. Yes.

Peter:  Something like that.

Amanda:  All fun and games.

Peter:  Did I need any prerequisite knowledge to shovel icing sugar? Absolutely not. There was no assumed knowledge that I knew anything about the food industry, not even the GMP practises actually.

Amanda:  Did they just assume then that agency who placed you there that you would have the mental capacity to be able to put a shovelling, some ingredients and put it in a box? Was there any talk around that?

Peter:  Nope. I think it was just as I was young and I had energy and I was quite fit and I could stand there for in those days, nine hours a day, shovelling icing, sugar nonstop. So icing mix nonstop

Amanda:  And someone's got to do it I suppose

Peter:  Someone had to do it. I was working with a guy that had been doing that job for 20 years. That was his whole role for 20 years.

Amanda:  He was probably happy that he had a young, young and coming take his place for five minutes.

Peter:  Oh, sure. Letting him go and have a smoke break while I was shovelling the next batch.

Amanda:  Wasn't smoking whilst you were doing the job?

Peter:  No. No. Not in those days, no. But I think what this points to is the type of assumed knowledge and experiences that are coming in at novice level, which is you don't have much of anything. You probably might have your wits about you and a general understanding of, you know, food comes in packets and then you scoop it out and ate it in some form or another. But back in our day, I don't think there was any particular requirement to have GMP training or any sort of food handler basics these days. And I think it's quite different.

Amanda:  Do you think now for say a 16 or 18-year-old coming into the food industry that they actually have access to more knowledge before they even get into a business? Just because of YouTube and you know, they can look up this type of stuff. There's those viral videos that are, say quite a lot over Facebook of how things are made, how certain foods are made. They kind of get a bit of an idea where we didn't have that.

Peter:  I think so. I think if you type in food safety into a search engine or into YouTube, you probably going to come up with 55,000 different videos on what food safety looks like. And I'd say some employers these days are expecting you to look at some of these things before you come on site and even if you're not doing it before you're hired, I definitely think it's part of the induction process.

Amanda:  Yes, absolutely. So, if you’re certified to any of those GFSI, sorry. Okay. Certified to the GFSI standards. Part of the training program is at induction, you have to be instructed on basic GMP food safety and even under the FDA FSMA rules, every person working have to be a qualified individual. That means that they've done basic GMP training, or they have that knowledge before they can actually work with food.

Peter:  I'd say my very first formal food industry role when I was working in a laboratory for a food production company, that was when the introduction in the GMP or good manufacturing practices and hygiene practices first started. You weren't really allowed into the production facility unless you understood what protective measures you had to do. That was hair nets, gloves, you know, clothing, those sorts of things. And then what were the good manufacturing and good hygienic practises required for the laboratory.

Following instructions

Amanda:  I think on that side of it, do you feel that when you went through that process, were you just told what you had to do or was it explained to you why you had to wear a hair net and why you had to do X, Y,Z ?

Peter:  Yeah, I think we were just told you had to do it. There wasn't really the explanation around what it was protecting. It was just these are the policies and the procedures that we expect you to follow, do these things. And I guess this comes down to the attributes in this space is for a novice, you want a novice to have a willingness to learn and understand the concepts that have been put forward to them and to follow these things. So, to be somewhat diligent in their process.

Amanda:  I think if you're not in that mental capacity to follow instructions, because that's what you're going to have to do at this level, people don't want to hear your feedback that I want to hear your ideas on things. They just want you as Pete did, just go in and shovel that icing fondant and put it in a bag and that's it. We don't want any innovation.

Peter:  No, I don't tell him you need a big a shovel or you could do it faster or something like that. Or you could automate the process, which I'm, you know, I may have been inclined to do in those days is, Hey, I think there's a better way in which people, in which case people might say, thank you very much. Shut up.

Amanda:  That's it. We're not paying you to innovate. We're just paying you to do the job.

Peter:  Go back to your shovel please.

Amanda:  And put that smoke out.

Peter:  Exactly. I don't smoke! But I think that whole willingness to hear your ideas and your improvements comes much later in your career. But at this novice level, what they're really looking for is someone that can very quickly pick up on a direction or a command and be self-organised to follow those commands and then come back, come back and report once those activities are complete or if there's a reason why they cannot be completed.

Amanda:  Do you think there's reporting at this stage or do you think it's more that someone's checking that you did what you're supposed to be doing?

Peter:  I think someone's checking up on you. I don't think you're really doing much reporting apart from finished or not finished. I'm done. Is there something else to do? So there's, there's a level of that organisation that's required in terms of I've got the work done, but you're fully supervised at this novice level. It's rare that they're going to let you go off and, you know do some more complicated task without any authority or supervision to do that.

Amanda:  When you were doing your icing sugar, were you having to then measure it out or you would just go, you’ve got the product already? Pre-measured and it was done.

Peter:  No, no, no, that's the, the shovel was the measuring instrument and you were told, you know, load up the, bag and the box to a certain weight, make sure it doesn't go over that and then repeat.

Amanda:  Okay. So, there was no input to the formulation or anything.

Peter:  Nothing at that point. Even in my very first food role in the lab role that I was talking about, I was doing salt titrations that was what I did eight hours a day in those days, salt titrations and I was only just to do that one task and report the outcomes. Not change the method of titration or the quantities that you'd be titrating. You just followed the work instruction that was in the lab manual and you just kept doing that.

Combating boredom?

Peter:  I think it was probably, well for me with the hyperactive mind, I think it was after hour one, but I was replacing again someone in the lab that had been doing that job for 10 years. So there, this comes down to attributes pretty much about what's your motivator. There are people that like consistent, reliable, unchanging work because it forms an important part of their day so that they can use their brain space to focus on other things. What am I doing at home when I get home? Did I buy milk before I left?

You know, what are the kids doing or you know, do I need to change the tyres on the car? These are the sorts of people that like that work and there's other people that are interested in the social environment. So who am I working with in the lab? Who can I have lunch with today? Is this a good thing? Can we have a drink after work? There are some people that like to lead the process, which is, hi everybody, come and watch me do this process. I'm really good at it. Now you come and do it for me. And then there's, there are other people out there that are very much into the innovation and the ideas of the process. Hey, how can we make this better?

Amanda:  Do you think when you come in as a novice, you might have all these hidden ideas and things that you want to do and attributes that it's very hard for those type of people to just do the basic job there they're employed to do?

Peter:  I think so. Particularly if you're in the innovation and ideas space, you're going to get bored with that process and you're going to want to change it really quickly. And that's probably not a good trait to have in your first roll out. I mean, some people might appreciate the fact that you've got an interest in innovating, developing, improving the process, but generally it needs novice roles. The supervisor or their manager or whoever it may be, just wants someone to tick over the process, just keep the process rolling, complete the tasks and achieve the goal at the end of the day. Which is, you know push out some quality control, quality assured product.

Amanda:  I think if you're lucky enough to get a supervisor or a boss who's quite happy to niche those type of skills, that makes your work day a lot better and it helps you to actually improve and be directed and be better at what you're doing. But you don't always get those people. You're not always fortunate enough to have those people who will nurture that in you.

Peter:  When you finally got into the industry and started working in food safety or food production functions, what were some of the things that you were doing typically?

Amanda:  When I said I started with public health as a health inspector, I had been at university already for two years. I think I mentioned in a previous episode we had to do a full 12-month work experience as part of graduating. It would end up being a four-year degree. I'd already had two years. But in those first two years, it was all the basics of science. You had to know chemistry, physics, human physiology… all of these things that make up the sciences.

When I actually went into public health, none of that stuff was applied whatsoever. So then that obviously made me question, well, what have I done for the last two years? But what they had me doing was computers were just new, okay, at that time, these massive, big things. There were no windows around. I had to put together graphs. So we'd gone out, I was kind of attached to one of the health inspectors, one of the other inspectors, and I'd go out with them and they were starting to teach me.

I would go and do swimming pool safety tests where I would get the chlorine. For me, that was very basic. Get some pool water in a bottle, put a chemical in it. And that would tell me how much chlorine is in the pool. And then that would directly relate to what's the likely risk of there being microbes with all these kids making the water warm or murky, whichever way you want to look at it.

Peter:   Murky pool water.

Amanda:  Well the warm, the warm water.

Peter:  The warm patches… swimming into a warm patch.

Amanda:  That was probably one of the first things that I did, was go around doing swimming pool testing. Then I, because obviously in that first year I didn't have a car. I think it wasn't till my second year that I worked there that I was actually given a vehicle as a trainee. But definitely the first year, I'll have to go back and look at my diaries because I have diarised all of this stuff - as you do.

Peter:  Of course, you do.

Amanda:  From 25, 27, years ago, something like that. So definitely swimming pool, I would kind of tag on with the director of public health of our unit and basically just chaperone. I did used to chaperone him a lot because… well… so he could smoke cigars in the car.

Peter:  Awesome.

Amanda:  That was great at that time. And one of the other inspectors… I used to drive because I'm a bit of a nervous passenger.

Peter:  What you're saying is you like to take control of all situations whenever possible?

Amanda:  No and I think it's that, I just think I didn't feel comfortable. You know, when you're driving, and someone is actually looking at you while they're talking to you and you could see carnage about to happen in front of you. I don't cope with that very well. I don't know why.

Peter:  Because you're not in control perhaps?

Amanda:  Anyway, this is not like a couch session Pete. Okay.

Peter:  I’m just pointing out a particular attribute.

Amanda:  Nothing about being a novice in that.

Peter:  No, no, no.

Learning new skills

Amanda:  I would go with the public health director and would get to Sydney and got to meetings and we're doing a lot of emergency management stuff. HIV had just kind of come onto the scene then. I was attending a lot of meetings, so it was more around me just being there and absorbing what people were saying to start helping me on my knowledge. But like I said, from a knowledge perspective, I'd already done that two years of Uni, but no experience.

Actually, I think I'd maybe done a month at a local council where I just tagged with one of the senior environmental health officers and gone around and done, you know, complaints about barking dogs. It was probably building on my skills around communication at that point. Like how do you deal with things and probably more conflict management.

I've had conflict before in jobs, like working in restaurants and working as a checkout chick, you're always going to get cranky people, for whatever reason, but more so in a restaurant when people didn't like what they were getting or their meals or whatever around that. But this was a different level of conflict. When you're rocking up to someone's house and saying, you know, we're going to take your dog off you because of X, Y, Z, that's a different level of conflict.

Building knowledge

Peter:  When you were doing the food safety compliance work, was there a level of assumed knowledge? Did they just think, okay, you've got this and we'll talk at a more complicated or technical level?

Amanda:  Yes, absolutely. So, for me, I'm kind of a bit proud, I would come home and I would read up about whatever. They would give me a book and say, just have a look at this. I would read old journal articles because we were doing a lot of research through uni anyway. So I would go in and do that. And also, there was people who I was going to uni with who were working in work experience positions.

I would talk to them to say, you know, how did you deal with this? Or do you have to do this in your job? Blah, blah, blah. So that was quite a good network to have other people who were at the same knowledge level as me and going through the same experience that we could actually bounce ideas off. It was helping me learn all that knowledge, bringing up all of our knowledge together.

Peter:  I think that's really important. What you're talking about there. That's when we mentioned that attribute about a self-learning and or the ability to learn is really important. Here, when I think I can recall when I did my work experience, I worked at CSIRO in a particular laboratory and the professor at the time was telling me about his studies. I was just working in a laboratory and glad to be there because I had a real interest, keen interest in science and this goes talking about organics and a genetic modification that I had no idea what this was when I was doing it, but I had to go home and tell my parents about and say, what did you learn today?

And said, well, this is the stuff that was mentioned and so the next thing I know I'm bundled into a car taken down to Parramatta library at that time and trying to find any information I could around these topics because I didn't want to go back the next day to work experience and a front up to this professor who was getting quite frustrated with me at the time that I didn't understand the content that he was talking about or be that he was pitching it well above my head or as a year 10 student, not a university graduate.

Amanda:  Well that would end up being a bit of an issue. Did you guys have those encyclopaedia Britannica’s when you grew up?

Peter:  Oh yeah, absolutely, didn't everybody?

Amanda:  Well, the other one was the funk and wag.

Peter:  What did you call me? Punk and wag?

Amanda:  No, that set of encyclopaedias, but I think again, because we'd had that university base, you did have library. But the key thing is what Pete said before is having that attribute that you want to actually go and do self-learning to make your knowledge better so you can perform better in your decision.

Peter:  Did they direct your tasks in that role? Pretty much like what I was doing. You were told to do one thing?

Amanda:  Yes. In public health, yes. They would say “okay Amanda, we want you to write.” One of the things that I did have to write about was the swimming pool yearly survey report. It was like, here's all the data, do something with that. Make it look pretty, throw Some graphs in there. This actually gets released to the public, so I would end up well when I ended up putting that stuff together. Then it would go to the director who'd go through with these red pens and rewrite certain sections because I didn't, I wasn't at that point going to have that full knowledge on how to write technical pieces or technical reports.

I did from a university perspective because we had to do that as part of our core studies, but to actually write it in a way that was meaningful for the general public to understand while still sounding authoritative, whatever the word is. So that ended up being a learning process on the job. A lot of my writing ended up being a lot like the directors because I would go back and read his changes and I was like, okay, yeah, that flows much better. That sounds much better in what I was doing from that side of it.

Peter:  There was a limited level of trust and authority in that role where you could create content, but you couldn't, let's say publish content, right?

Amanda:  Yes. It wasn't just about to go publish, you know, something from a government department on back, it all had to go through an approval process and government is very much like that. There is a lot of consultation, collaboration and then that decision which is a joint decision as to what is being released and what's not being released. I didn't at that point have that authority to do that.

Peter:  Would you then sum up that role is low complexity, so singular sort of tasks or simple tasks, low level of trust, but high level of supervision, some assumed knowledge of the role.

Amanda:  Yes, absolutely.

Peter:  But definitely a behavioural requirement around willingness to learn and understand and apply some general concepts that have been given to you in the workplace.

Amanda:  Yes, absolutely. That's the way it went and then as I started to show more proficiency in what I was doing. And I think that was a very short period of time for me because it was initially a 12-month placement. They did put a lot of trust in me and I had that ability and we were quite a small unit. We went to a massive big manufacturing site where you've got 300 odd people.

We were a unit of around about, I think 12 people. I've got to be around other people in the business. Like I said, we were doing the HIV stuff and I was with the sexual health coordinator. I would go and do some work with environmental health. That's where I was with the environmental health part of it. But then doing a lot of stuff that the director was exposed to where he was the director of public health.

So again, for me just being in those meetings, that was a really good learning experience that then I could go and apply that in, you know, the other work that I was expected to do. I think application and knowledge was a big thing in that novice area.

Confidence

Peter:  Let's talk about a really important attribute and that's around confidence. When you first started that role, did you feel confident in what you're doing or the outcomes you were going to achieve?

Amanda:  Oh look, I personally did, but I've always been that type of person anyway. I really haven't been that kind of shy. Well, I’ve been shy or introvert, let's call it. I've always probably been an introvert, but I've always had a great belief in my abilities, and I know what my limitations are. And if I did have limitations, I would work to get past those limitations. I've always been a really self-motivated person anyway.

Peter:  Yes, and motivations are an important part in all of those things and obviously being observant to things that are happening around you. I would say my level of confidence in some of these roles. Well I was quite confident and I knew how to shovel icing fondant into a box that wasn't particularly difficult. But when I started working in the laboratory in the food environment, I came straight out of university from a chemistry and science degree, so I already knew how to do titrations and how to do it correctly.

I think what I started second guessing a little bit about myself was the results that were coming out, particularly if they were falling, the end result was falling out of range of the specification for the product and rather than me thinking it was the product that might be out of spec, I guess I started thinking that it was the way I completed the task that delivered a result that was causing the out of spec.

I soon learned to realise that production environments are ever changing, depending on what the ingredients are, the weather, the workers that are handling up the shifts, all those sorts of things. But at the time, I guess I was still building confidence in the role, particularly as it had some level of complexity. I wouldn't say it was a very complex role. Maybe at the time it felt more complex than what it actually was.

Amanda:  Do you think that you didn't have confidence in your own ability to understand that they were outliers and not everything will always be perfect and 100%?

Peter:  Yes, and I think that came with the understanding as well. As an understanding of the role increased, I did that particular function for, I would say a good six months before other things were introduced and more complexity was added. I think as your level of understanding of the role evolves your level of confidence naturally increases, it would be totally reasonable and expected for a novice to come in with a lower level of confidence into the food industry. And into a role that might revolve around food safety or quality control.

How long are you a food safety professional novice for?

Amanda:  So in saying all of that, how long or how many years or weeks do you think you remain a novice?

Peter:  It depends on the tasks they put you on and on your ability to apply your knowledge and using your attributes to the work experience to demonstrate a competence or capability. But it's usually in your first year. I would say you're a novice for the first 12 months of any role.

Amanda:  Okay. And I think it really, again, comes back to those people who are directing you. If they're not giving you the support as a novice to be able to do whatever tasks you've been asked to do, that makes it very hard for you to progress.

Peter:  Yes. And feedback obviously. So when you’re doing well, as much as when you aren't performing the task correctly, both are important forms of feedback for you.

Amanda:  When, when you were working in the lab, where there written procedures that you had to follow or was it all verbal procedure?

Peter:  The lab had all written procedures. That was a really important part, and again, this is when the quality, the quality standards ISO 9000 in those days first started coming out where it talked about everything needed to be prescribed and documented. We had volumes of information where what wasn't documented when something came out of spec, what to do next and that's around problem solving. That became more of a verbal process versus a written process that you follow.

Amanda:  Was that mainly because it might be a different thing every time?

Peter:  By and large there were differences in it, but I think in those days, the whole corrective action, problem solving and decision making wasn't something that you build into a procedure. It was to do the procedure regardless of the outcome.

Twelve months in the making

Amanda:  For those people who are just starting off on this path, or you're looking to go into another career, expect at least 12 months around staying at this novice level, but that is going to be based on your attitude and your motivation. I think that you can get there quicker. Based on those other attributes, if you've got a real willingness and a passion to get further and to do more, you've got to take responsibility for that additional learning cause that's when people are going to start giving you more responsibility.

Peter:  Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's a hard and fast rule that 12 months is the minimum requirement. It all comes down to the individual, but to manage the expectations of yourself and your employer and your peers, I would say it's a good expectation to think the first 12 months you're still learning about the role about yourself and about the company that you're working within and the process.

Amanda:  Yeah. And the people as well. The dynamics of those people and how they all work together or don't work together because that's something that's always going to be there. You're always going to have conflict around that sort of stuff in a business. I don't think I've even been in any business way. We love everybody 100%. Everybody loves everyone. There's always going to be those niggling things. Which then, come to a whole other thing that sometimes, I just want to do my job.

I don't want to get involved in office politics. I don't want to get involved in, you know, those other personal things that you get going on with another staff member. I just want to do the job. I suppose being able to work through that and still maintain a level of responsibility or that's showing to the upper management that you are capable is probably a good attribute to have to at this level.

Peter:  Well this is the beginning of your career path at the novice level and the application of everything we've spoken about will progress your career.

Amanda:  Okay. We might wrap that up for this episode of Off The Menu where we've spoken about just the qualities, the attributes, the experience, the skills, and knowledge that you need when you first come to the food industry. We’ve targeted it around the food safety experience that both Peter and I have had in that side of it.

Peter:  Thanks for listening.

Amanda:  Next episode we're going to get into the next level, which will be which level Pete?

Peter:  Advanced, beginner…

Amanda:  Advanced, beginner. So hopefully you'll listen to us in the next episode. Thanks very much for listening.

Peter:  Thanks for listening.

About Off the Menu

In the first season of Off the Menu, Amanda Evans-Lara and Peter Holtmann dive into career development for newbies and professionals working in the food industry. Listen in to learn about the skills, knowledge, personal attributes and work experience needed to map your food industry career path.

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