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» » Career DevelopmentThe Featured Topic for this month is Career Development which covers making the most of internships, ways to become a better brewing industry employer, personal development and more.
For over 140 years, the Siebel Institute of Technology has attracted an extensive global following. Our alumni span more than 60 countries and are found in almost every major brewery on earth. Our on-campus classes include a mix of participants from breweries of all sizes who hail from locations all over the world, enhancing our student’s learning experience by exposing them to differences in culture, equipment, methods and beer styles.
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Brewers are called to the profession out of a love for art and science. It is physically demanding but brimming in tradition and creativity. To rise through the ranks at a brewery from various jobs to once day becoming holder of a mash paddle is a great accomplishment. But there are many job opportunities in the brewing industry outside the role of brewer.
Internships have long been a way for people to get a taste of an industry and gain valuable experience. In the best of circumstances, internships offer newcomers an entry level opportunity and give the company additional support. In recent years, companies have started to reevaluate how they run their internship programs. Long the standard, unpaid internships have come under criticism for exploiting workers and offering an opportunity only the financially secure can afford to undertake. With these challenges in mind, let’s take a look at two successful internship programs.
It’s incredibly easy to experience the wide world of beer from the comfort of your couch. Distribution has made sampling world class beers easier than ever. While this is remarkable and praiseworthy, it’s no substitute for getting out and experiencing other cultures and breweries in their home environments. Whether it’s the taproom a few miles away or a brewery halfway around the world, traveling for beer helps expand our understanding of the beverage we love and widens our experience and knowledge.
There is a lot of work that goes into finding the right candidate for an open job. With a record number of breweries in the country and job seekers looking for the right fit, there is often a strong focus on the selection process.
After screening the resumes, and initial calls, rounds of interviews, and finally an offer to the right candidate, the real work begins. Onboarding an employee is a critical step to making sure the budding business relationship starts off well and lays a foundation for long, fruitful employment.
Creating an active, engaged in-house tasting and sensory program should be top of mind for brewers of every size. You spend so much time planning, brewing, cleaning, and often just trying to survive, outsourcing the beer sensory element of your business to consumers in your taproom or even machine or lab testing can be tempting. While there is great value in using lab work or your frontline tasters as part of your overall mechanism for ensuring product quality, it remains crucial to have a diverse array of brewery employees routinely taste and assess the quality and consistency of the beers that you produce. Let’s take a look at some key points in creating a tasting and sensory program.
Your team is set, and the business is humming along. Employees seem happy, the customers are keeping the coffers full and the tanks busy and for the first time in a long time you, as an owner, have a moment of peace and calm. Then reality sets in and thoughts of the future creep into your brain.
To keep the positive momentum going you need to make sure that everyone is equipped with the tools they need. This does not just mean physical equipment, but proper training as well. It is time to start thinking about additional, outside, training for your employees.
The American craft beer industry likes to talk about being small and independent and removed from big business culture. Living in the realm of small business it cultivates a scrappy and local image that resonates with a lot of consumers.
There are, however, some lessons or practices from corporate America that should be incorporated into smaller breweries. As the industry looks to grow and diversify and build a meaningful culture, creating an internal mentor program is a step in the right direction.
There are a lot of reasons to start a mentor program and it can be as intense or casual as a brewery wants, but the bottom line is that by connecting seasoned employees with newer ones can strengthen a company culture, create an avenue of collaboration, and begin a cycle that can continue for years to come.
Beer is a dynamic beverage and even outside of the glass, from taproom experiences to packaging, the industry has fostered an air of creativity that should bring smiles to customer’s faces.
What about brewery employees? The day-in-day-out experience of clocking in and doing the expected work can quickly become rote, just like at any job. If beer is creative, the employees responsible from the brew deck to accounting should also be mentally stimulated to stay happy and productive and hopefully bring fresh energy into the brewery.
Here are a few ways to help keep staff feeling less like button pushers and more like creative outlets for good.
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By Tara Nurin
This article was previously published in Forbes 2016
Reprinted with the permission of Tara Nurin
Kurt Lown didn’t know what to do with his life. After high school, he floated between jobs in construction and window cleaning. In 2014, the Michigan man signed up to earn an associate’s degree in English. Then he saw an article about a new program at another Michigan institution, and had the “aha” moment that could drastically alter his future.
Last updated 6/28/2022
“Education never stops, there’s always something more to learn”
ProBrewer has compiled a growing list of scholarship opportunities for those who wish to enter the craft brewing industry and those seeking to enhance their skill set and advance towards their career goals.