Kinsa Group Blog

At Kinsa Group, we realize how critical it is for you to stay on top of the latest trends, newest products, and most recent scientific innovations affecting the food and beverage industry. 

To make it easier for you to learn about relevant industry events, here are a few links to comprehensive 2010 calendars:

1. Meatingplace.com’s 2010 Event Calendar and 2011 Event Calendar provide links to dozens of food industry-specific conferences, expos, training workshops and forums.  Accessing these calendars requires signing up for free membership to meatingplace.com.
2. The American Beverage Association provides a directory of 2010 meetings and conferences specifically for beverage industry professionals.
3. BNP Media has several comprehensive calendars of events that include links to global trade shows, summits and expos for the food, beverage, and packaging industries:

            Master Calendar of Events

            Snackfood & Wholesale Bakery Calendar of Events

            Beverage Industry Calendar of Events

            Food & Beverage Packaging Calendar of Events

 Kinsa Group - National Recruiters for the Food & Beverage Industry

Kinsa specializes in recruiting professionals, executives and senior-level managers for the food and beverage industry.  Our promise is to deliver the talent who most optimally fit your company’s philosophy and culture.  By focusing on the best interests of both parties – and by drawing on food industry experience and assessment expertise – we are able to offer the best hiring solutions.  Contact us today.

Ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information coming at you each day?

With the barrage of data pouring in from newspapers, TV, the internet, social media, RSS feeds, e-mails, voicemails and good-old-fashioned face-to-face meetings, finding the critical information you need amidst all the “white noise” can be exhausting.

Take the BLS Monthly Employment Situation, for example.  It contains monthly employment estimates for over 1,000 industries from its Current Employment Statistics program.  However, the changes in these overall employment levels tend to be delayed in the monthly labor reports – making it a lagging indicator of economic trends.

Sound like a lot of white noise?

Not entirely.  Temporary help employment numbers, which are part of the monthly BLS report, are generally considered to be a coincident indicator for overall employment.  This means that changes in temporary help employment tend to forecast subsequent changes in overall employment and coincide with changes in economic activity.  Why?  Many companies, including food and beverage industry firms, use temporary staffing as a means to quickly adjust their operations to meet fluctuating demands for their products and services.

Here’s how to stay on top of employment trends with temporary help data in the BLS report:

1. Go to the BLS Current Employment Statistics home page.
2. Then select either the HTML or PDF version of the “Employment Situation Summary.”
3. Data for temporary help services can be found in Table B-1 (page 30 of the report’s PDF version).

The BLS CES can also help you key in on highly specific industry employment numbers.  Custom data views are available for various food and beverage industry segments (food packaging, food and beverage distribution, food and beverage manufacturing, food and beverage processing, etc.) based on NAICS codes:

1. Follow this link to Create Customized Tables.
2. Select the data you wish to view, the industry super sector, and the industry.  For quick access to food and beverage industry NAICS codes, visit NAICScodes.com.
3. Select either “Seasonally Adjusted” or “Not Seasonally Adjusted” or both (Seasonally adjusted data will remove any changes in employment related to normal seasonal hiring or layoffs, thereby recording current trends or irregularities.).
4. Select “Get Data” to retrieve the selected information.

Kinsa Group is poised to help you manage your specialized food and beverage recruitment needs as the economy slowly improves.  Serving companies throughout the United States for over 25 years, we can deliver the highly qualified professional and senior-to-executive level management candidates through our unique food & beverage recruiting process.

Keeping your résumé current is important to your continued career development.  But unless you’re actively looking for a job, the daily demands of life, home and work can easily push this updating process down on your priority list.  If you haven’t reviewed your résumé in over a year, here are just a few good reasons why you should take a fresh look at it:

• Even if you’re currently employed, you never know when an attractive job opening may present itself.  A current résumé can help you capitalize on an unexpected opportunity – before someone else has the chance.
• Over time, your important achievements and contributions may be forgotten.  Regular updating ensures that critical, measurable accomplishments are accurately recorded.
• In many cases, your résumé creates a first and lasting impression on a potential employer.  Make sure it’s a good one.  By periodically reviewing and honing your résumé, you can create a more powerful marketing tool that accurately and favorably represents you as a professional.

Use these tips to make your résumé update simple and comprehensive:

1. Review personal information (address, e-mail, LinkedIn URL, etc.) to ensure everything is up-to-date.
2. Review your oldest job.  If it’s no longer relevant, and you have at least 10 years of documented work history without it, remove it.
3. Update your responsibilities and accomplishments.  Consider the following:  special projects; new expertise developed or job responsibilities awarded; knowledge or skills enhancement from special training or professional development; awards or other recognition; challenges you faced and solutions developed; measurable results you helped achieved (e.g., eliminating process inefficiencies, increasing productivity or sales, improving staffing or operational performance, etc.).
4. Revist your objective statement.  If it is not in line with your current career aspirations, rewrite it.  The statement can be general, but should show some direction toward the field in which you want to work.
5. Reevaluate your references.  Verify that these individuals still work where you have noted and that contact information for each is correct.  If you have developed new contacts who can attest to your recent achievements or heightened responsibility, consider replacing them with outdated references.
6. Update your résumé format.  Check online sample résumés to see if yours looks outdated and revise accordingly.  Additionally, you should create an electronic version of your résumé if you don’t already have one.
7. Proofread everything.  Sloppy spelling, grammar and punctuation may take you out of the running immediately.  If you’re not proficient in proofreading, ask a trusted friend or associate to help.

Looking for a better career opportunity in the food & beverage industry?  Give us a call.  The Kinsa Group has a wide variety of food & beverage industry career opportunities – from food science to plant operations to executive management.

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.

An effective mentoring program provides a wide range of business benefits:

• Facilitated onboarding.  Mentoring speeds up the process of bringing on new hires as well as redeploying existing employees into new lines of work.
• Increased employee satisfaction and retention.  Research has shown that employees who participate in mentoring programs have higher job satisfaction and reduced turnover.
• Improved employee productivity.  When employees are mentored, they can get answers to common problems quickly – without wasting time on rediscovering or re-inventing solutions.
• Effective career growth / succession planning.  Mentoring programs help employees reach their full career potential, grooming them to fill key roles as part of an organization’s succession plan.
• Knowledge management and retention.  Mentoring promotes effective knowledge sharing, to reduce the risk of losing critical skills and knowledge when employees leave.

Obviously, mentors can play an important role in ensuring your company’s continued success.  But while identifying a budding protégé may be straightforward, identifying a potential mentor can be more complex.  Whether that person is you, one of your managers, or an outside expert, a mentor should possess the following professional and personal attributes:

1. Senior-level business experience.  To provide guidance, the expert should have several years experience working in senior corporate positions.  At a minimum, the expert should be a professional peer to the protégé.
2. Interpersonal and political “know-how.”  The expert ought to be proficient in handling all sorts of complex interpersonal dynamics within the context of office politics.  To be an effective trainer, the expert must be able to help the protégé navigate the tricky political waters of his organization.
3. Integrity and confidentiality.  Professional development involves discussing high-level, strategic, off-the-record information, as well as sensitive personal issues.  Honesty and discretion are essential when broaching these confidential topics.
4. Organizational and personal insight.  The expert must have an in-depth understanding of the company’s objectives, needs and hierarchy.  Equally, he must also appreciate the protégé’s strengths, weaknesses and goals.  To achieve professional development goals, the trainer must align both the company’s and the protégé’s interests.
5. Flexibility and ingenuity.  When egos, ambitions and agendas collide, sparks fly.  What works for an organization one day may be thrown out the window the next.  An expert trainer must be able to shift gears, develop solutions on the fly, throw out tactics that prove ineffective and come up with new ones – fast.  He must be comfortable dealing with uncertainty to navigate a corporate environment rife with change.

Need a promising protégé?  Looking for your next mentor? Contact us today.  As a national food and beverage industry recruiter, Kinsa can provide the talented individuals – from R&D directors to food service sales managers to process engineers - your organization needs.

The time and costs associated with recruiting, screening, interviewing, evaluating and hiring employees are significant.  So why do it on your own?  A recruitment services firm can provide quick and cost-effective access to the talented professionals you need:

• Position Specification and Search Strategy Development.  Before starting a search, a professional recruitment firm will help you precisely define what type of individual you are looking for (skills, experience, traits, etc.), and identify the most expedient and cost-effective ways to find that candidate.  A quicker, more targeted search improves hiring success while reducing the cost of vacancy in the position.
• Recruiting.  A recruitment firm executes a comprehensive search strategy on your behalf, including advertising, database searches, cold-calls to target companies, social networking and generating referrals.  A recruitment firm with industry specialization, such as Kinsa Group, can leverage its experience, industry contacts and recruiting economies of scale to produce results faster.
• Assessing and Evaluating.  By working with a search firm, you save your HR department the time and expense associated with screening résumés, arranging and conducting initial interviews, and checking candidate references.  This frees your internal staff to focus on other key priorities.
• Guarantees.  To help ensure hiring success, many recruiting firms offer placement guarantees.
• Outsourcing.  Some recruiting firms, such as Kinsa Group, can act as your company’s internal recruitment function for a portion or all of your jobs – handling the entire recruiting / hiring process from job profiling through the on-boarding of the new hire, including staff, technology, method and reporting.   Known as Recruitment Process Outsourcing, this service improves your company’s time to hire, increases the quality of the candidate pool, provides verifiable metrics, reduces cost and improves governmental compliance.  RPO changes fixed investment costs into variable costs that can vary with fluctuation in recruitment activity.

Kinsa Group – A Better Way to Hire Food and Beverage Industry Professionals

Hiring on your own can be an expensive, time-consuming and frustrating process – so don’t do it alone.  Contact Kinsa today.  Using our unique recruiting process, our dynamic staff of skilled recruiting professionals will make your next hire a success.

Because of their drive to achieve personal career goals, high performers are unafraid to take risks – this includes leaving your company for a competitor’s.  So how do you keep your best and brightest working for you? 

Use these insights to motivate your high performers and maximize their job satisfaction:

• They need opportunities to learn and grow.  Ironically, the more high performers are able to grow professionally within your organization (and therefore become more marketable), the more likely they are to stay with you.  Your company must meet their need to remain highly marketable.
• They need recognition.  Although fueled by their own need to achieve personal career goals, you must give them recognition due.  When appropriate, let them shine.  Stroke their egos, but only when merited.
• They need continual career development.  Recruit senior employees to mentor high performers, helping them to set goals, develop their careers and take on tasks beyond those designated in their job descriptions.  Mentors should use their status and influence to help these protégés gain entry to groups and experiences that would be career enhancing.
• They need their individual goals to align with their company’s.  As an employer of these talented individuals, you must match their skills and interests with their responsibilities.
• They value additional non-compensation benefits.  Wellness programs that promote the general health of employees (e.g., exercise and nutrition programs, health screenings, etc.) are an important factor in a high performer’s decision to remain in his current position.  Additionally, work / life balance programs (e.g., casual dress days, educational seminars, flex hours, job sharing, etc.) increase their overall job satisfaction.

A final note.  One of the biggest reasons employees don’t return to former employers is because they’re embarrassed to think about how to approach coming back.  So if a high performer leaves your company for another, let him know that the door is open for his return, in case he realizes that the proverbial grass isn’t greener on the other side. 

The Kinsa Group specializes in recruiting and assessing high performing professionals for the food and beverage processing industry.  Visit our website to learn more.

Looking for ways to earn a raise or promotion?

Get on your boss’s A-List.  If you consistently show your boss that you’re doing a great job, you’ll progress further, faster.  Here are a few quick tips to get you noticed, separate yourself from the pack and create a lasting positive impression:

1. Communicate clearly.  When in doubt, err on the side of clarity and ask questions when things are unclear.  Provide your boss with regular updates about your projects and plans.  But be careful not to go overboard – ask him directly if you’re providing enough information or too much.
2. Honor your commitments.  Underpromise and overdeliver.  Don’t shy away from new challenges, but make reasonably sure you can hit an objective before taking on the additional responsibility.
3. Know what makes your boss tick.  Learn your boss’s pet peeves – and avoid them.  Find out what his priorities are – and incorporate them into your own (e.g., if your boss is a “numbers guy,” quantify all your results).  Anticipate his needs, by providing what you know he’ll want before he asks.  Show him you understand the issues he faces and you’re sure to make your mark.
4. Provide solutions – not just problems.  Everyone makes mistakes.  So if something does go wrong, view it as an opportunity to set yourself apart from chronic excuse-makers.  Own up to the problem and come to the table with potential solutions.  Your boss will appreciate your ability to think for yourself and manage a difficult situation.
5. Be positive.  When you celebrate a departmental success, send a congratulatory e-mail to those involved and copy your boss.  The gesture will draw attention to your success as well as your leadership skills.  During more stressful times, strive to maintain a positive attitude.  For every two complaints or suggested improvements, point out eight positive things.
6. Take a calculated risk.  A boss will notice a talented employee who demonstrates his desire for excellence by occasionally sticking his neck out.  So when the time is right, volunteer for a difficult assignment or challenge the status quo to improve a work process.  Your courage and enthusiasm will increase your visibility and earn the respect of your boss and co-workers alike.

The Kinsa Group:  Another Great Way to Further Your Food and Beverage Industry Career

The Kinsa Group provides access to diverse executive, management, research, food science, quality assurance, operations, sales/marketing, and engineering career opportunities in the food and beverage industries.  Contact us today to find out how we can help you further your career, faster.

Are you new to the world of social networking?  Looking for fresh ways to enhance your career prospects?  If so, use these quick tips to turn a social networking profile into a powerful career-building tool.

Find the right site for your career interests.  Begin by browsing the different “networks” provided by major sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.  Click through each network’s subfields to determine which sites have areas that match your needs and interests.

Build your profile carefully.  When creating a profile for career purposes, make sure that the information you post is accurate and appropriate.  Start by reviewing other profiles, then mirror the style and content of the best ones.

Choose an appropriate profile picture.  Your picture makes a critical first impression on a recruiter.  Be sure it’s a positive one.  Only post pictures that are “neutral” (i.e., not sexy, costume-like, or potentially alienating) and appropriate for business.  If you already have a profile picture, review it with a critical eye to ensure it prepresents you in a professional manner.

Maintain distinct identities.  If you use sites for both personal and professional purposes, separate your virtual lives by establishing dedicated social networking pages.  Direct all co-workers and business contacts to your professional page and ask them to “friend” you there.

Manage your privacy settings.  Take advantage of the technology sites like Facebook offer to limit what potential employers can learn about you.  Like other features, privacy options are continually updated – revisit them periodically to ensure your settings keep details about your religion, political beliefs and relationships private.  As a rule of thumb, assume that everything you post is public, except what you explicitly designate otherwise.

Post content, links and news.  Post timely content that highlights your professional area of expertise.  By including relevant links on your profile, you: demonstrate your concern about developments in your industry; position yourself as an informed expert; prove your commitment to improving yourself as a professional.

Garner recommendations.  As your online professional network grows, seek opportunities to obtain and post recommendations from superiors, co-workers, subordinates and satisfied clients.  Their third-party perspective gives readers a more objective view of you as a professional.

Strengthen ties to colleagues by posting referrals for them.  Nothing will endear you to someone more than helping him in his career.

Complement your social networking job search activities.  The Kinsa Group, a nationwide recruiter of food and beverage industry professionals, provides the perfect complement to your online networking activities.  Because we work directly with leading industry employers, we provide you with access to a multitude of rewarding professional opportunities that never make it to job boards or other online channels.  Register online today.

As a manager, you know that empowered employees:

• have the authority, and take the initiative, to make sound business decisions;
• are energetic, passionate and committed to doing a great job;
• are creative and innovative problem solvers;
• continually strive to improve quality, productivity and morale;

all because they feel personally rewarded for doing so.

But while the benefits of empowerment are clear, the steps to creating an empowered workplace may not be.  Use these quick tips to get your business started on the right path:

1. Understand what empowerment really is.  Empowerment isn’t something you do to people.  It’s an environment you create by giving employees goals, information, feedback, training and positive reinforcement.
2. Identify an opportunity for empowerment.  Start small.  Create a work team by selecting a few key employees who have the right skills, knowledge and resources to complete a small test project.  This project should be challenging enough to allow your staff to grow and take on additional responsibilities.
3. Set clear expectations.  Let your employees know what to do and how to do it.  Factors to consider include:  deadlines, channels for sharing information, methods for delegating authority, and ways to check progress / measure success.
4. Provide decision-making guidelines.  Provide clear instructions for when and how to make good decisions.  Explain when it’s okay to the take initiative and when employees should check with team members first.
5. Encourage open communication.  Information sharing is a critical component of an empowered workplace.  Create an atmosphere in which employees feel comfortable expressing concerns and sharing new ideas.
6. Establish accountability.  Provide the advice, perspective and guidance your team needs, but require them to create and manage their own solutions.  If mistakes are made, do not step in and fix them – use them as opportunities for employees to learn.
7. Let go.  Tough as it may be, don’t micromanage.  Once you’ve established clear expectations and guidelines for the project, it’s time to take your hands off the wheel.
8. Provide positive reinforcement.  For empowerment to permanently take hold in your organization, your employees have to want to do it.  So celebrate the successes (however small) your employees have while working on the test project.  Provide the feedback they need to feel respected and valued in their efforts.
9. Review results, then take it to the next level.  Once the project is complete, assemble your team for a debriefing.  How did the group do?  What worked?  What didn’t?  Use the lessons learned to develop a more comprehensive plan for getting your whole company on the road to empowerment.

An Empowered Workplace Starts with Great People

Kinsa can deliver the talented food and beverage industry professionals you need to create an empowered workplace.