On a recent call of one of FPSA’s industry councils, a representative from the Young Professionals Group (YPG) raised the issue of internships and how important they are to helping attract students into the food and beverage industry. While this statement was more than obvious to all of the Council members on the call, the fact that it needed to be raised in the first place signaled that we all need to better promote opportunities such as internships to this next generation of food industry professionals.
Readers of this blog know that this is definitely not the first time we have raised this critical topic, however in past entries we have focused more on recruitment for full-time positions or training. This time, we need to focus on an even younger audience that is just now starting to look for opportunities that they hope will lead to a career after graduation.
While FPSA members all have their own avenues for identifying and recruiting talent, all face competition for this valuable resource thanks to evolving demographics of this country as we watch baby-boomers continue to retire at an average rate of 10,000 workers per day. All industries are affected by this brain-drain and as a result, both OEMs and food manufacturers need to do whatever it takes to get noticed by the younger generation and show them that there is a viable, stable career path here in the food and beverage industry.
How?
Well, let’s start with the FPSA Job Board. FPSA members get to post vacant jobs on this online platform as a free member benefit. Members have been taking advantage of this quite extensively in recent months. One reason for that is because the staff is highlighting these job postings on FPSA’s social media channels which are followed by a few thousand industry professionals. Talk about a targeted approach!
Well, the Job Board also features opportunities for internships. Not only will we be posting these internships on social media, FPSA and the YPG will be sharing these internships with the students and universities we are working with, helping members to expand their audience of potential interns (and future employees) while making it much easier for the next generation to identify new opportunities and visualize a career in this industry.
For any members interested in posting their available internships, you can easily do so on the Job Board today. However, I would point out that the timing on this couldn’t be better as undergrads are already looking for this summer. As you can imagine, COVID hasn’t made this process any easier for these students so I encourage you to jump on this as quickly as possible. Maybe set February 28th as your deadline. That will help you secure the best possible candidates with an eye towards the future and who you might want to hire once they finish college.
Staff is on hand to help you with this if you need it. Feel free to reach out at any time.
Andy Drennan
SVP, Food Processing Suppliers Association
