FS&T webinar explores skills for the future

The ISEKI-Food Association is conducting a webinar, “Skills & Competences for the FS&T of the Future”, on 18 June. The webinar will be presented by Katherine Flynn, Scientific Secretary of the European Association for Food Safety SAFE consortium.

The webinar will present data from a study conducted as part of the ISEKI_Food 4 project, which aimed to identify the skills needed by the professional food scientists and technologists (FS&Ts) of the future.

FS&Ts who were currently employed were asked to rate the importance of skills previously identified as the most desirable by FS&T employers. The top five hard, scientific or technical skills and soft, personal or generalisable skills were rated on a five-point Liker scale for their importance to the respondents’ jobs in coming years.

‘Thinking and solving problems’ and ‘Being responsible’ were the first and second most important skills, with 64% and 59% respectively claiming these will be very important for their job in the future. Overall, the ‘very important’ ranking was 51% for the five soft skills and 43% for the five technical skills. Interestingly, a prior study showed that FS&T employers also identified soft skills as more desirable than technical skills, but employers and employees seem to disagree on the most important soft and technical skills.

The data will be further elaborated to show relationships among the most important skills and workplace and job responsibility. Additional comparisons with employer views of desirable FS&T skills will add to the discussion.

To register for the webinar, click here.