In food and beverage production, a hiring mistake is not just a productivity issue. It is a food safety issue, a recall risk, and an audit finding waiting to happen. Rizonet recruits for processors, co packers, and beverage producers who cannot afford any of the three.
The candidate pool looks large until you apply the real filters. Add GFSI scheme experience, HACCP certification, allergen management, and high speed line exposure, and it shrinks fast.
Then add environment. A candidate from a dry snack facility may struggle in a wet, cold, ready to eat plant with aggressive sanitation cycles. Those are different working conditions demanding different discipline.
We filter for both before you spend interview time.
SQF, BRCGS, FSSC 22000, HACCP, and PCQI are not resume garnish in this industry. FSMA obligations make documented competency a compliance matter rather than a preference.
We verify which schemes a candidate has actually been audited under, and in what role. Sitting in the room during an audit is very different from owning the corrective actions afterward.
Reach out and we’ll give you a market read before you commit to a search.
Food plants run nights, weekends, and holidays. Sanitation happens when production stops, which usually means third shift.
Candidates who are surprised by this leave quickly. We put shift structure, weekend expectations, and on call rotation on the table in the first conversation. That costs you a few candidates early and saves you a resignation later.
Food plants routinely accept high turnover on off shifts as unavoidable. It usually is not.
Most off shift turnover traces back to two things: supervisors promoted for tenure rather than leadership ability, and a hiring process that never honestly described the schedule.
Fixing the first means hiring supervisors who can actually lead, which is a different search than hiring for technical competence. Fixing the second costs nothing except a harder conversation early.
We handle both, and clients who address them together typically see retention improve inside a year.
A vacant plant manager role is visible immediately in throughput. A vacant QA manager role is quieter and more dangerous. Documentation gaps compound during the vacancy, corrective actions slip, and by the time an auditor arrives the backlog has become the finding. Food safety leadership gaps deserve the same urgency as operational ones, even when the daily pressure feels less immediate.
Many candidates can describe sitting through an audit. Fewer can describe building the corrective action plan that followed one. We ask specifically about findings a candidate has owned and closed, not just witnessed. That distinction usually separates a candidate who maintains a program from one who can rebuild a struggling one. None of this works without a recruiter who understands the difference between a documentation gap and a genuine food safety risk. Candidates and clients both test for that fluency early in the conversation.
