Getting a graduate job in the food industry

Andrew Dockerill talks about his journey to getting his graduate role at Bakkavor, the process involved and how he is finding it so far. Welcome to adulthood... Yes, you’ve thrown (or soon to throw) your mortar board in the air and the years of ‘student living’ have finally ended. Gone are the midweek nights out, the late night library sessions and the countdown to student loan payments is replaced by a more frequent countdown to payday… you’ve become a new professional. About my route... First thing I would say is speak to any friends you have, that have already started grad schemes/permanent positions, as they can provide great first-hand advice for applications and what they found worked/didn’t.

Around December, I first applied to the Bakkavor graduate scheme, known as the AMS scheme (Accelerated Management Scheme). Before my careers fair, I have to admit I had never heard of the company, but with a touch of googling and browsing the company website, I soon gathered this was a company spanning across many product categories and customers and the AMS scheme contained lots of training opportunities, good financial incentives and an opportunity to become a manager in 3-5 years. After the initial application process, along came the psychometric and numerical testing… the first thing I must say is you really need to get yourself in a quiet room, with a good internet signal and laptop battery charged! Next came the online interview, which I personally found the most challenging, where you are staring at a screen until a question pops up (which could be anything from how you fit the company values to your opinion on a current affairs issue and how you think it could impact the industry- it is really about how quickly you adapt under pressure).

I spent my first year of the scheme working at Bakkavor Freshcook (Holbeach, Lincolnshire), a site manufacturing ready meals exclusively for M&S, as a Process Technologist. This involves managing the food quality and safety of trials and launch phases of new products and making improvements to existing products/processes on site. The real positive of a Process role is you get quite hands on in the factory, get a really good knowledge of all factory processing and its great launching a successful product/range and seeing someone pick it from the shelf. The stressful days come when you think you have all bases covered for a certain trial or even a launch and then something still goes wrong so there’s a lot of problem solving skill development! Since September, I have been positioned in Bakkavor Meals London (Abbeydale) in a site that mainly produces fried goods, working as a Technical Coordinator. This role has much more of a systems focus, working on HACCP, allergen management and validation schedules and projects.

I hope you find this useful. Feel free to send any questions to myself at: Andrew.Dockerill@Bakkavor.com or feel free to come say hello at the IFST Spring Conference! Andrew Dockerill, IFST 2018 Ambassador and New Professionals Group