Recently in Job Hunting Category

Luckily for the food industry, even in times of a recession, people still need to eat. We may change our diet somewhat, but we will continue to buy food. This is obviously good news for us as the food industry will continue to employ graduates.

The Guardian on Thursday published an interesting article, Graduates who have studied abroad more appealing to businesses, and would be curious to know how relevant food professionals, and graduates of food related courses, feel this is to our industry.

The article tells us that international businesses are increasingly seeking graduates who have a global awareness, particularly those who have the initiative to study overseas as part of their learning. Britain is home to people from many different cultures and nationalities, so should our food industry graduates, even those who plan to take up a career at home, be more culturally aware?

What benefits would the food industry gain if students undertook a period of study, or work experience, abroad? As always, we'd love to hear your views...

Come on, where are you all? They say that a majority of veg buyers are traders and not strategic procurement specialists. Who are 'they' and are 'they' right? There is real pressure for food retailers to source their veggies from developing countries and of course from good old Blighty which takes skill, knowledge, expertise and strategic planning. Yes, we like a skilled negotiator who doesn't shy away from challenging dialogue with suppliers. Surely though, if a French bean takes 60 days from planting to harvest in Kenya and then a further 48 hours before the likes of you and I can take if off the shelf in Sainsburys, the Buyer needs more than just a "good deal". Don't they also need to understand the challenges faced by the grower, crop programmes, seasonality, customer demand, shelf life and on and on. So, help me out here you Fresh Produce buyers and tell me about your specialist, niche and sophisticated skills. Silence isn't always golden or delicious!

I'm not sure how many of you have caught the Twitter bug, but it really is strangely addictive. When pushed to describe it to people, it's difficult to know where to begin. Telling people "its micro blogging - instant and mobile" and that "you follow and are followed by people, with whom you're able to share ideas and links" just doesn't do it justice.

The cutest way I've heard it described is by Wired who described it as "almost like ESP...a Social Sixth Sense".

So, why are we talking about Twitter on the Food Job Blog? Well, product development chef recruitment specialists Check On, are rolling out (what we believe to be) a UK first, by launching a 'real time' jobs & news update service via Twitter for anyone looking for work as a development chef / work in new product development (NPD).

Why? Well, for one thing if you're working in a traditional cheffing environment, you're unlikely to want to sit down in front of computer after a split shift. http://www.Twitter.com/CheckOn will make it easy (and free) for you to keep updated however suits you: via the web, RSS, Instant Messenger or by SMS on your mobile. You'll also be able to communicate with Check On consultants and your peers ( if you want to ). It might - whisper it - even be fun :-)

If you're signing up for the CheckOn service however, we thought it might be interesting to have a look at some other cool things to do with Twitter...

First, you need to have some friends. Once you've found people you want to follow - the best way to do that is by checking out the followers of people you're interested in - If you follow them, and you've got something interesting to say, they'll then follow you. And you're off - multi layered conversations with your own community, delivered in realtime via mobile, IM, facebook ... in 140 characters or less. There really is no substitute for giving it a try......

The Guardian recently wrote a great piece on How to get the best out of Twitter

For those of you who can't be bothered to link or missed it, here's some cool twitter tools you might want to check out:

Finding people

www.Whoshouldifollow.com
www.Twitdir.com - directory
www.Twitterholic.com - the top users and accounts

Searching and organising

www.Summize.com - search for a word or phrase across the entire Twitter feed.
www.Quotably.com creates threads of discussions between people.
www.Terraminds.com - search engine, for users or phrases.
www.Tweetscan.com - search by user and time.
www.Twitterlocal.net finds twitterers near you.

Sharing

www.Twitthis.com,- lets people looking at your site or blog share the URL via Twitter.
www.Twitturly.com - what's being most linked-to and talked about?
www.Tweetmeme.com - what sort of topics are being discussed?

Visualise

www.Twittervision.com - real-time Google Maps mashup showing where tweets are being posted.
www.Twitterverse.com - tag clouds
www.Twittearth.com - visualisation of tweets, put onto a spiralling globe.
www.Tweetwheel.com - which of your friends are already following each other?

And..

http://pipes.yahoo.com/ouseful/tweetspeech - Yahoo Pipes converts (incoming) tweets to speech, playable via RSS.
www.Twittersnooze.com - hit the "snooze button", briefly, on verbose friends.
http://www.wp.korelab.com/yet-another-twitter-badge-twitter-balloon - your tweets superimposed on an image of your choosing.
www.twerpscan.com, avoid followers who befriend everyone: may be spammers.

See you on Twitter!