Just in time for the holidays and all the related excesses of food and celebrations of family traditions around the table, culinary author Irena Chalmers has come out with an informative and highly entertaining book on careers in the food industry: “Great Food Jobs 2: Ideas and Inspiration for Your Job Hunt” (Beaufort Books, 2013, $17.95; also available as an e-book).
Written as what Chalmers calls an expansion and companion to an earlier title (“Food Jobs: 150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers,” 2008, $19.95), “Great Food Jobs 2” divides this massive industry into 10 areas of work: restaurants, retail, art, media, science, publicity, history, farming, education and relief work.
In her introduction, she also makes this distinction: The people in these roles all share a passion for food, but not necessarily for cooking. Indeed, only a fraction of the jobs described in this book involve the actual preparation of food.
Each chapter includes a short list of three to 20 relevant job titles and descriptions of the work, as well as book recommendations, anecdotes and quirky trivia such as the menu for the last meal on the Titanic. Chalmers ends the book with short sections on job hunting and future trends in the food industry, both of which feel sufficient given the related information embedded in the earlier chapters.
What sets this book apart from dozens that I receive about career opportunities in different industries is the combination of delightful writing and the surprising applicability of Chalmers’ advice to people pursuing careers in almost any field. I honestly believe an electrical engineer could have as much fun reading this book as a pastry chef would. And both would walk away with career tips to apply in their respective fields.
The author of more than 40 books and a regular contributor to numerous food-related publications, Chalmers is currently a faculty member at the Culinary Institute of America, where she teaches a course called Food Jobs and counsels students on their career paths.
She calls herself a matchmaker because of her strategy of identifying careers that build on students’ non-culinary interests. As examples, she notes the student who loves cycling and now writes a food column for a cycling magazine, the guitar-playing student who became the personal chef for a rock band and the Korean student hired to cook at the Korean Embassy.
It’s a good tip for anyone in any field: identify another interest or strength and find the intersection with your chosen career path. Nearly any profession, from accounting to plumbing, can be run through this formula to identify a core group of targeted employers to approach. The beauty of this strategy is the way it elevates the candidate in an employer’s eyes, while also providing the ongoing fuel of passion and resiliency to push the candidate past the normal discouragements of a job hunt.
Proving she’s no literary elitist, despite her ability to turn a phrase, Chalmers provides four pages of practical steps for writing a food blog — more than I expected in a chapter that also includes tips for becoming a cookbook author, a science writer and a food app developer.
It’s probably evident, but I enjoyed every minute I spent with this book. As this isn’t my field, I can’t say whether it provides a comprehensive view of all food jobs, but it certainly expanded my horizons. Chalmers’ direct experience counseling food careerists is not incidental to my high regard. She is witty but compassionate in sharing career stories from the front lines, and her overall approach to career development is easily transferable to other arenas.
If you’re searching for a gift for the foodie in your life, this might make a refreshing change from cookbooks and truffles.
