Jimmy Hassett is the QA Officer at Prolife Foods of Waikato, New Zealand. He’s also one of the very first recipients of the Safe Quality Food Institute’s Certified SQF Practitioner Credential, which is administered by Exemplar Global. The development of the Certified SQF Practitioner Credential was made possible through a robust collaboration between SQFI and Exemplar Global. For 15 years, SQFI and Exemplar Global have been strong partners, administering the SQF Food Safety Auditor program with and for SQFI.
Hassett’s educational background in electronic engineering demonstrates that there are various career pathways to professional success within the food safety industry. The SQF Practitioner Credential offers credibility within the field and, in Hassett’s case, recognizes not only his on-the-job experience, but also his additional formal learning and personalized CPD plan.
In this conversation, we talked with Hassett about his start in food safety, the importance of training, and what his practitioner credential has meant to him and his career.
EXEMPLAR GLOBAL: Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to this point in your career.
JIMMY HASSETT: I have a degree in electronic engineering, but I ended up struggling to find a job in my specific area straight out of university. So, I started working as a field service engineer for a company named BBC Technologies, which designs, manufactures, and services blueberry sorting and packing equipment. I was employed there as a field service engineer, traveling all over the world, installing and repairing these machines. I was hired with the idea that, as I learned more, I would eventually move into a research and development role to better use my degree.
As I got more and more involved with various projects in the field, the business saw that I had a passion for quality and improvement. They didn’t have a quality manager at the time, and I wanted to be back home in New Zealand rather than spending 10 months of the year in the United States, which is where a lot of our customers were located. So, they appointed me to the position of quality manager. When I started in the role, BBC Technologies had no real quality management system or documentation, just random Excel sheets that people filled out, so I started by implementing a QMS.
After three years as quality manager at BBC Technologies, I got another exciting opportunity to take on a production supervisor role, which gave me some great experience managing people.
Finally, I moved onto my current role here at Prolife Foods. It was very interesting because they were looking for someone with five or more years of experience in fast-moving consumer goods, and I had zero experience in that specific role. The Group Quality Manager saw that I was able to learn quickly, and here I am, nearly five years later, happily still on the quality team at Prolife.
EG: From the beginning of that story until now, how much time has elapsed?
JH: A bit more than 10 years. I was a field service engineer for two years, a quality manager for three years, about nine months as a production supervisor, and now five years with Prolife Foods.
EG: Tell us a little bit more about your role with Prolife today.
JH: I look after our production rooms. At Prolife Foods we produce quite a variety of different ready-to-eat snack foods. Part of my job involves looking after specific production rooms, but I have a view into all of them. That involves managing HACCPs, dealing with any nonconformances, daily evaluations, handling complaints from markets or customers, trending of complaints, implementing SOPs, and conducting training. No two days are the same. The cycle sort of continues, but every day is kind of different.
EG: You mention the training you provide to your team, but what about your own training? How were you trained, who trained you, and what training do you still undergo today?
JH: I’ve had HACCP training and advanced internal auditor training.
EG: And was the SQF Practitioner credential your first time going through this type of certified program?
JH: Yes, I’d never done that before.
EG: What did you think of the process?
JH: It was really good. I liked the opportunity to go through a program developed with SQFI to make sure that it aligns with their standards and most recent code.
EG: Your credential is still fairly new, but in that period of time, have you had opportunities to apply these learnings?
JH: I have, to an extent. The credential is good because it gives a bit of extra weight to my recommendations. When I say to the business, “Hey, look, we should do this or that,” if they ask, “Why?” I can say that my recommendations come as a practitioner via this credential. It shows the business that I know what I’m talking about and that I have committed to continuous professional development in managing and improving SQF food safety systems. That includes training in HACCP and internal training, along with deep knowledge of the SQFI code.
EG: And if you were to talk to colleagues, either in your organization or outside of it, what would you say are some of the benefits of pursuing this type of credential?
JH: Again, I think it comes back to the fact that it demonstrates that I have a firm understanding of the requirements of the SQF Code. It’s also good to have that little digital badge against my name on LinkedIn. Plus, the credential is something that I can show auditors when they come in to give them a little more confidence that I know what I’m doing during our yearly audits.
