Kinsa Group Blog

The BLS Employment Situation Summary continues to paint an anemic economic picture.

Economists continue to talk about a “jobless recovery,” with many employers focusing on productivity gains, as opposed to hiring, to manage any increases in business.

What’s the upside?

Well, if your company isn’t focused on hiring right now, it may be the perfect time for you to review and improve your employment screening process.  Doing so could help you:

• increase compliance;
• reduce theft, fraud and accidents;
• prepare you to make even better hires when the time comes.

As experts in employment screening for food & beverage executives and professionals, The Kinsa Group recommends taking the following steps to reduce the potential for negligent hiring and discrimination:

Consult with your attorney. If you hire on your own, you should have your legal counsel review your screening process to ensure you’re complying with all current legislation and hiring regulations.

Be consistent. Your screening process should be the same for all candidates within comparable job descriptions.  If you do a background check on one production manager, you should also conduct the same background check with candidates for all similar supervisory and management positions.  In addition to preventing anyone from “slipping through the cracks,” a uniform process helps minimize your exposure to litigation.

Use social media carefully. Social media has made access to candidate information fast, easy and free.  But if you intend to use this publicly available information to screen candidates, make sure that you obtain written permission and follow all EEOC and FCRA provisions.

Formalize and document your process. If you don’t already have one in place, now is the time to standardize, formalize and document your background screening policies and procedures.  Creating a formal policy makes screening more effective, efficient and consistent.  Furthermore, should a problem arise, your ability to show that you applied fair, consistent and documented screening processes will limit your legal exposure.

Reduce your risks and make better quality hires with Kinsa.

Hiring top food & beverage professionals – honest, high performers who do what they claim they can do – is critical to your organization’s continued success.  Kinsa’s full complement of search and assessment options can help ensure that success.  Here are just a few of the benefits our services provide:

• Transfer employment screening risks such as discrimination and negligent hiring.
• Save time and eliminate process bottlenecks employment screening creates.
• Hire the best food & beverage talent available.  We go beyond typical background and reference checks to create the best possible matches.  Kinsa evaluates candidates’ performance in the specialty skills of the position, results achieved in past positions, and overall predictors of success.  Online behavioral testing is done for Priority Searches, and an all-day face-to-face interview can be performed by our partners in Industrial Psychology for Retained Searches.

Work with Kinsa and your hiring decisions can be made with confidence – guaranteed.

The Kinsa Group–a leading recruiting firm for the food and beverage industry–currently has a variety of outstanding professional and C-level executive job opportunities, including the following position:

Quality Manager (Bilingual – French or Spanish)

A multinational food company experiencing tremendous growth with well-known, branded products has created a new Chicago-based position for a bilingual Quality Manager.  This is a high-visibility, key leadership role within the Americas region.  The company’s core values include customer service, superb execution and a commitment to product quality.

Job responsibilities:

• Coordinate all activities within Americas region, including areas of production, purchasing, subcontracting and distribution.
• Audit corporate and external sites.
• Ensure products manufactured or marketed in region meet appropriate domestic and foreign quality regulations.
• Implement group best practices in region.
• Efficiently analyze and report quality issues.

Ideal candidates will possess the following:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Food Science or related field (advanced degree a plus).
• 5+ years of quality experience within the food industry, including both plant and corporate level experience.
• Internal and external audit experience.
• Knowledge of relevant regulations within the U.S. or Canada.
• ISO experience.
• Ability to speak French or Spanish is required.
• Ability to travel 20%, both domestically and internationally.

This position has a great compensation and benefits package, and is based in the exciting Chicago, IL area.  Discover more about the Bilingual Quality Manager #4782 and apply online.

To search our comprehensive list of Food and Beverage Industry Jobs please visit www.Kinsa.com.

Planning to hire in 2011?

As optimism creeps back into our market, many food & beverage companies plan to increase their direct headcount.  If yours is among them, avoid these roadblocks to hiring success:

• Not pre-screening candidates.  Many hiring organizations skip this step, assuming that the interview process will weed out unacceptable candidates.  But in their attempt to streamline the process, these companies are wasting valuable time interviewing people whom they’d never hire.  Pre-screening allows you to eliminate candidates:  without basic knowledge and experience levels; outside your salary limits; with long-range goals that are not aligned with your company or available position.
• Relying solely on interviews to evaluate candidates.  Research has shown that the typical interview only increases the likelihood of selecting the best candidate by less than 2%.  Why?  Most managers don’t structure their interviews or develop scoring weights to pre-determine the best answers.  Additionally, candidates say what interviewers want to hear in order to get hired.
• Relying on general “good guy” criteria.  Most companies want to hire good people, but merely being a good person (i.e., enthusiastic, hard working, self-motivated, etc.) is not a predictor of job success.  A potential employee may have the best attitude in the world, but if they don’t have the job skills and experience you need, they can’t hit the ground running.
• Not investigating candidates’ backgrounds.  Sure, checking references, verifying work history and conducting background investigations are time- and labor-intensive.  But with résumé fraud on the rise, you must protect yourself from desperate job seekers who feel compelled to lie in order to get hired.

Tips for Heading-Off Hiring Mistakes

• Evaluate candidates on skills critical for job success.  Create a position analysis to select the skills most vital to your available job, and develop interview questions (and weighted responses) to identify and evaluate those skills.  The more structured your interview process, the less likely you will be to hire someone just because he’s similar to you or because he’s a “good guy.”
• Do more than talk.  To increase hiring success, develop several methods, in addition to the interview, for evaluating candidates.  Obviously, those methods will vary greatly based on the type of position available.  But as long as the tests and tasks you assign are directly related to the job at hand, your extra effort will provide a wealth of relevant information to help critically evaluate and compare candidates.
• Enlist the help of a hiring expert.  As a national food & beverage recruiter, The Kinsa Group has the resources and expertise to quickly and cost-effectively deliver executive and c-level food & beverage professionals with skills, experience and behavioral traits to succeed in your organization.  We use professionally trained interviewers, a wide array of assessments, thorough background checks and satisfaction guarantees to ensure the success of your next hire.

According to a recent article by The Washington Post, the Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Modernization Act has generated plenty of lobbyist activity.  Since the bill was introduced at the beginning of last year, at least 221 industry organizations have hired 77 lobbying shops to represent their interests.

Spurred by a series of nationwide food recalls and outbreaks of food-borne illness, the food safety bill would give the FDA considerably more authority over the industry in order to reduce outbreaks of food-borne illness.

Smaller, more specialized firms with insider knowledge of the FDA and the Agricultural Department were in high demand to lobby on the overhaul.  In fact, some industry organizations and corporations hired multiple lobbying firms to represent their interests – because the stakes are so high.

And their work is not done.  Lawmakers are now quibbling over the constitutionality of Senate language that imposes fees on companies for recalled food.  The procedural glitch could ultimately force the Senate to vote on a new version of the bill during the current lame-duck session – and potentially push the legislation to the next Congress.

The Kinsa Group – Food & Beverage Recruiting and Industry Experts

At Kinsa, food and beverage industry recruiting and assessment is all we do.  With over 25 years of experience, we understand your industry and we know how to deliver the top-tier professionals your company needs to succeed.  What can we do for you?

It’s tough out there.

If you’re not seeing much progress with your job search in the food & beverage industry, here are a few key ways a Kinsa Group recruiting specialist can help you get an edge over your competitors:

• Industry expertise. At Kinsa, food & beverage industry recruiting is all we do.  From operations & plant production management to supply chain and R & D, we understand the ins and outs of your industry.
• Access to unadvertised opportunities. Our recruiters have extensive networks within the food & beverage industry.  We know who is hiring, restructuring and firing.  And in many cases, great career opportunities are available exclusively through our recruiting firm.
• Résumé and interview skill feedback. As employment experts, our recruiting professionals can help you polish your résumé and build your interviewing confidence.  Additionally, they can give you the inside track – providing valuable information on interviewers’ personalities and interviewing styles, further preparing you to perform at your best.
• Keep your morale up. Being out of work can take a toll on you – emotionally and financially.  A recruiter can potentially provide interim contract employment opportunities to help you:
  - Earn money while you search for direct employment;
  - Keep your schedule flexible so you can continue your job search;
  - Network with new co-workers to uncover additional employment leads;
  - Keep your job skills sharp and up-to-date;
  - Avoid gaps on your résumé;
  - Stay positive and productive.

You’re More Than Just an “Applicant”
At Kinsa, you’re more than just a résumé, a degree, or a set of skills.  You’re a critical component of our success.  We want to help you achieve your career goals, by matching you with an opportunity that suits your skills, needs and interests.  Contact us today to learn more about executive and management career opportunities in the food & beverage industry.

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

When you hear this saying, you may envision a nervous job seeker, compulsively straightening his suit and repeating his 30-second “personal sales pitch” before an interview.  But quite honestly, the saying is just as relevant for food & beverage hiring companies.  Why?

When you mainstream and orient a new hire, you set the tone for his work experience with your organization.  The more positive that initial experience, the more welcome and prepared the individual will feel in his new position.  This will, in turn, give him the confidence and resources to quickly begin making a positive impact within your company (which is why you hired this person in the first place, right?).

So make a commitment to create a great first impression on your new hire by implementing a thorough and effective onboarding process.  Use these tips to make him feel welcomed, valued and prepared to hit the ground running:

• Welcome a new employee with a letter.  Before the individual’s first day, send a friendly and informative letter to welcome him and review his first day’s schedule, helpful tips for parking, to whom he should report, etc.  Alternately, you can post new employee schedules, materials, benefits forms and a FAQ on your company Intranet, and make it accessible from a link in a welcome e-mail.
• Prepare a corporate “family tree.”  Familiarize new hires with your company’s “who’s who.”  You can make photos, names and job titles available on your company’s Intranet, or maintain a simple bulletin board with the same info to facilitate the getting-to-know-you process.
• Pre-orient existing staff members.  Provide employees with your new employee’s résumé and job description before he starts.  Advise each team member to conduct a meeting with the new hire in which he shares a description of his own position, reviews the ways their roles interact and covers how they might work together in the future.
• Approach the process from the employee’s point of view.  The onboarding process can be complex and overwhelming for your new hire.  To keep your new team member feeling valued, try to create orientation procedures that make the process fun, interesting and as painless as possible.
• Provide and review a written plan of employee objectives and responsibilities.  This step will eliminate confusion about job functions and will open the floor to discuss concerns or new opportunities.
• Give the new employee your undivided attention.  Be careful not to let e-mails, phone calls, or other employees distract you during orientation sessions, because this sends the unintended message that the new hire is not worth your time – a real morale-killer.
• Make day one personal.  Prioritize interpersonal relationships with key colleagues as soon as your new employee starts.  Make sure you welcome the whole person – not just a set of job functions – from the outset, and you’ll be sure to make a great first impression.

Kinsa makes new employee transitions as successful and simple as possible. 

To facilitate the smooth transition, optimum performance and retention of your new hire, The Kinsa Group assists with the onboarding process.  Once you have hired your ideal candidate, Kinsa continues its service, providing counseling on new employee assimilation and development from acceptance through the first year of employment.  Contact us today to learn how our unique 8-Step Recruiting Process ensures hiring success for food & beverage companies like yours.

The Kinsa Group–a leading recruiting firm for the food and beverage industry–currently has a variety of outstanding job opportunities, including the following position:

National Accounts Manager – Food Service

Rapidly growing Midwest food manufacturer in a hot niche is looking for double-digit growth over the next three years.  They have the capacity to do this in both their bakery and sauces lines of business, and want to continue to grow their meat business as well.  To facilitate this growth, they have created a new position for a National Accounts Manager to call on major Foodservice National Accounts like Panera, Subway and other similar delis, etc.

Job responsibilities:

Grow National Account Business at least $2 to $10 million in one year.  The ideal candidate must have the wherewithal to design and execute the sales strategy to achieve this growth.  The National Accounts Manager will collaborate with resources at headquarters including Marketing, R&D and Supply Chain for materials, planning, forecasting, etc.

Ideal candidates will possess the following:

• Bachelor’s Degree with 5 to 10 years of food sales experience.
• National Sales Management experience.  Client is looking for a subject matter expert, who can overcome objections and close the sale successfully.
• Team leadership skills, with the capacity to manage a sales team or brokers / distributors.  Should have managed a team or brokers / distributors in the past.
• An established track record of growing national accounts to $10 million a year.
• Active leadership experience developing a Sales Strategy.
• Bakery business experience a plus.  Meat also preferred.

Discover more about this National Accounts Manager – Food Service including salary range.

And to search our comprehensive list of Food and Beverage Industry Jobs please visit www.Kinsa.com.

It’s like a bad dream.

You’re in an interview, dressed to impress and feeling totally in control of the situation, when the unthinkable happens – the interviewer asks a question that completely stumps you: 

“If you could have dinner with anyone from history, whom would it be and why?”

“Why is a manhole cover round?”

“Which fictional character would you say best describes you?”

If just reading these questions makes beads of sweat pop out on your forehead, you’re not alone.  In an interview situation, most of us would be stopped in our tracks by off-the-wall questions like these.  But that’s the point:  interviewers ask odd questions intentionally, to see how well job candidates thinks on their feet and respond to stress.

Because unusual interview questions can be about virutally any topic, they’re nearly impossible to prepare for.  Still, here are a few quick tips to help you handle them more effectively:

• Keep your composure.  The question was meant to throw you off your game – so don’t let it rattle you.  Keep your face neutral and recognize that this is the wacky question you’ve been anticipating.
• Take your time.  Smile, take a deep breath and avoid the temptation to blurt out an answer.  Don’t panic – if you have to take a moment to gather your thoughts, it merely demonstrates that you think carefully through a situation before responding.
• Relax.  When it comes to unusual interview questions, your answer is not as important as how you handle the situation.  In fact, most don’t have right or wrong answers.  So take the pressure off yourself.  You don’t have to be brilliant, you just need to answer honestly.

If you’d like some practice answering off-the-wall questions, consider the following popular ones:

• If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you be?
• If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?
• If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
• If you were a _________ (insert:  car, animal, salad dressing – you get the picture), what kind would you be and why?
• If you won $50 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money?
• How would you rate me as an interviewer?

Seeking a Job in the Food and Beverage Industry?

Register with Kinsa today.  Our team of food & beverage industry recruiting professionals will listen to your needs, match you with a perfect career opportunity, and then prepare you to ace the interview.  Click here to learn more about our unique services for food marketing, food production, food scientist, food safety, research & development and executive management professionals.

This fall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) will jointly publish new Dietary Guidelines for Americans.  The guidelines are revised every five years by a panel of scientific experts and serve as the basis for federal food and nutrition programs.  Additionally, they are considered “authoritative advice” for Americans on dietary habits that will promote good health and reduce the risk of major chronic diseases.

So what will the guidelines likely recommend?

• Reduced salt consumption.  Linked to hypertension, heart disease and other health problems, salt has become a primary governmental target in recent years.  Although most major food companies have already substantially lowered sodium in their product lines, the question is still at the back of my mind - will the feds begin to actually ration this ingredient?
• Reduced use of sweeteners.  Ingredients like high fructose corn syrup have been linked to now-epidemic obesity in our population.  Our government is waging war on these sweeteners.  In 2009, President Obama alluded to soda taxes as one way to battle obesity – essentially making soda the “new tobacco.”  California and Washington already have huge “sin taxes” on soft drinks.  And even though over half of Americans oppose them, several other states have put these taxes on the legislative table.  What’s next?
• New label regulations and advertising bans.  The people have spoken, and they want change.  In a recent survey by Food Minds, 86% of respondents were in favor of the overhaul on food and front-of-label packaging that lists calories and beneficial nutrients.  Nearly three quarters of respondents support government-sponsored educational program to help Americans understand the difference between “good” foods and ” bad” foods.  Additionally, over half of the respondents would support the government banning of advertising “unhealthy” foods to children.

Bottom line, our government is attempting to play an increasingly larger role in determining what we put in our bodies.  Individual choice and responsibility are under fire.  And, unfortunately, the food industry – despite best efforts to provide safe, nutritious food at affordable prices – is under tremendous pressure to do even more.

Kinsa Group can help you prepare for the changes coming to the food & beverage industry.  As recruiters specializing in the food & beverage industry, we can provide quick access to the top Research and Development specialists your organization needs.

Every year, the Food Packaging Trends study helps us stay abreast of important shifts in North America’s food and beverage industry.  This year’s results reflect the impact of economic constraints on operations, as well as the importance of improving sustainability and flexibility.

Here are some of the study’s key findings:

• Tighter belts.  45% of survey respondents reported fewer capital expenditure projects will be slated for the coming year.
• Opportunity for differentiation.  28% of respondents are taking advantage of the poor economy to stand-out from their competitors.  By investing in high-speed production equipment, introducing new package designs, and updating graphics, these firms aim to deliver the safe, fun, portion-controlled, clean, and convenient products that consumers want.
• Increased sustainability initiatives.  Contrary to skeptics’ predictions, concerns about recycling, material recovery, and other sustainability issues remain strong – despite the economic downturn.  Nearly half of the readers rated sustainability as an extremely or very important issue affecting their packaging operations (same as last year).  Other key sustainability concerns include:  reducing energy use and waste streams; reducing transportation costs; increasing the use of recycled content in packaging.
• Packages that use less material, but offer more protection.  Half of organizations surveyed are reducing material use in packaging.  Prime targets include corrugated materials, and other types of dividers and inserts used in shipping.  In addition, three in five firms are innovating ways to better protect their products.  Major primary and secondary package redesign efforts aim to lower overall cost, while reducing product damage during shipping.
• Need for increased flexibility.  This year, readers rated increased machine flexibility/changeover as the third most important issue impacting operations over the next 24 months.  To offer the product diversity consumers want, production facilities are modifying existing equipment, introducing manual functions and operations, and/or adding modular or flexible production lines.  To further enhance adaptibility, two-thirds of respondents said they use robotic systems in their finished goods areas – especially for palletizing.

Want to know more?  The comprehensive report is available from Clear Seas Research.  To order the report, contact Sarah Corp at corps@clearseasresearch.com.

Kinsa stays on top of the trends that impact your organization, your industry, and your need for talent.  Contact us today to learn how we can deliver the experienced professionals you need to stay ahead of the curve.