Skill development in food professionals: a European study

Mayor, L.; Flynn, Katherine; Dermesonluoglu, Efimia; Pittia, Paola; Baderstedt, Erik; Ruiz-Bejarano, Barbara; Geicu, M.; Quintas, Mafalda A. C.; Lakner, Zoltán; Costa, Rui

doi:10.1007/s00217-014-2400-z

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This may indicate a trend towards growing professionalism in food science and technology. A recent study showed most employees with a university degree in food science had a Bachelor while a later study, in which 75% of respondents were under 40 years old, showed equal numbers with a Bachelor and with a Master degree (Mayor et al, 2015), and here, most current students expect either a Master or a Ph.D. degree. Of course, what a person expects and what actually occurs may not be the same.…”

Section: Questionnairesmentioning

confidence: 66%

“…When FS&T employers in Europe Copyright ©2017 ISEKI-Food Association (IFA) 10.7455/ijfs/6.2.2017.a1 brainstormed ideal employee skills, 76% of these were soft skills (Flynn, Wahnstrom, Popa, Ruiz-Bejarano, & Quintas, 2013). Despite this desire, employers tended to believe their FS&T employees do not have sufficient soft skills, while the employees stated that they do: e.g., only 42% of FS&T employers found their employees sufficient in Group Leadership while 92% of employees rated themselves as sufficient (Mayor et al, 2015). The importance of soft skills to food and drink employers and the disconnect on their presence in current employees merits further investigation and attention to soft skill acquisition for future FS&Ts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Food science and technology students self-evaluate soft and technical skills

Flynn

Vieira

et al. 2017

Int. J. Food Stud.

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Food Scientists and Technologists (FS&T) need diverse skills in the globalized food and drink sector: Food-specific or scientific / technical skills and generic or intuitive soft skills. This study determined how satisfied FS&T students were with overall improvement, and in key technical and soft skills, based on their university work; and if satisfaction was linked to geography, degree in progress, anticipated degree, anticipated work place or anticipated job responsibility. An on-line survey was completed by 267 students in over 20 countries using a 5-point Likert scale to evaluate satisfaction. Responses were analyzed by the Friedman or Kruskal Wallis tests for more than two groups, otherwise by the Wilcoxon Signed Rank or Mann-Whitney tests. There were no differences in Overall Satisfaction with technical and soft skills training. Among soft skills, training in Working with Others and Being Responsible were more often rated “Excellent” and students were more satisfied with their training than with Solving Problems, Communication and Positive Attitude. Students anticipating a job with high responsibility were more satisfied with overall soft skill training and with 3 of the 5 specific soft skills. Among technical skills, students were more satisfied with improvement in basic sciences (Microbiology, Chemistry, Processing, Safety), and those in Northern Europe were more satisfied with overall technical training. These data show variations in perception and/or efficacy of technical and soft skill training in Food Science programmes and underline the need for separate attention to the incorporation of soft skill training into the design of FS&T courses.

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Section: Questionnairesmentioning

confidence: 66%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food science and technology students self-evaluate soft and technical skills

Flynn

Vieira

et al. 2017

Int. J. Food Stud.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This may indicate a trend towards growing professionalism in food science and technology. A recent study showed most employees with a university degree in food science had a Bachelor (Flynn, RuizBejarano, et al, 2013) while a later study, in which 75% of respondents were under 40 years old, showed equal numbers with a Bachelor and with a Master degree (Mayor et al, 2015), and here, most current students expect either a Master or a Ph.D. degree. Of course, what a person expects and what actually occurs may not be the same.…”

Section: Questionnairesmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…When FS&T employers in Europe brainstormed ideal employee skills, 76% of these were soft skills (Flynn, Wahnstrom, Popa, RuizBejarano, & Quintas, 2013). Despite this desire, employers tended to believe their FS&T employees do not have sufficient soft skills, while the employees stated that they do: e.g., only 42% of FS&T employers found their employees sufficient in Group Leadership while 92% of employees rated themselves as sufficient (Mayor et al, 2015). The importance of soft skills to food and drink employers and the disconnect on their presence in current employees merits further investigation and attention to soft skill acquisition for future FS&Ts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food science and technology students self-evaluate soft and technical skills

Flynn

Vieira

et al. 2017

IJFS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food Scientists and Technologists (FS&T) need diverse skills in the globalized food and drink sector: Food-specific or scientific / technical skills and generic or intuitive soft skills. This study determined how satisfied FS&T students were with overall improvement, and in key technical and soft skills, based on their university work; and if satisfaction was linked to geography, degree in progress, anticipated degree, anticipated work place or anticipated job responsibility. An on-line survey was completed by 267 students in over 20 countries using a 5-point Likert scale to evaluate satisfaction. Responses were analyzed by the Friedman or Kruskal Wallis tests for more than two groups, otherwise by the Wilcoxon Signed Rank or Mann-Whitney tests. There were no differences in Overall Satisfaction with technical and soft skills training. Among soft skills, training in Working with Others and Being Responsible were more often rated "Excellent" and students were more satisfied with their training than with Solving Problems, Communication and Positive Attitude. Students anticipating a job with high responsibility were more satisfied with overall soft skill training and with 3 of the 5 specific soft skills. Among technical skills, students were more satisfied with improvement in basic sciences (Microbiology, Chemistry, Processing, Safety), and those in Northern Europe were more satisfied with overall technical training. These data show variations in perception and/or efficacy of technical and soft skill training in Food Science programmes and underline the need for separate attention to the incorporation of soft skill training into the design of FS&T courses.

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“…The results of higher education degrees and extracurricular training are presented in Figure 2. The 65% of the respondents stated they had a higher education degree, as indicated by the cumulative higher degree column, being 29% with BSc, 28% MSc, and 8% with PhD degree (Oreopoulou et al, 2015;Mayor et al, 2015). The high percentage of PhD holders could be partially attributed to the survey procedure, i.e.…”

Section: Scientific Field and Degree Of Qualificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualifications of Food Science and Technology/Engineering professionals at the entrance in the job market

Giannou

Lakner

Pittia

et al. 2015

IJFS

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The qualifications of Food Science and Technology/Engineering (FST/E) professionals were examined by a web-based survey conducted in 15 countries (14 EU and Turkey). The analysis of the responses showed that 65% of the respondents had a higher education (HE) degree (BSc 29%, MSc 28%, and PhD 8%), and 20% carried out extracurricular training before entering in the job market. The main fields of study were Food Science and Technology/Engineering, followed by Agriculture, Nutrition and Health, Safety/Hygiene, and Chemical Engineering in all three levels of HE degrees. Differences in the level of degree between genders were not observed, although a higher percentage of female respondents (36% of all female respondents) reported no higher qualification degree, compared to male respondents (33% of all male respondents). On the contrary, female respondents prevailed in extracurricular studies, compared to male ones. Gender, however, was a differentiating factor as far as the field of studies was concerned with female respondents prevailing in Nutrition and Health and male in Agriculture.

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Skill development in food professionals: a European study

Cited by 10 publications

References 8 publications

Food science and technology students self-evaluate soft and technical skills

Food science and technology students self-evaluate soft and technical skills

Food science and technology students self-evaluate soft and technical skills

Qualifications of Food Science and Technology/Engineering professionals at the entrance in the job market

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