What made us decide to set up Nutrition Talent? What do we want to achieve?
I remember us first discussing the idea over a drink or two and a delicious Turkish meal. We both care passionately about our profession, and the people in it, and we felt specific support for the profession we love so much was lacking when it comes to our careers. At the same time, we came into contact with companies, organisations and start-ups that needed that nutrition resource and insight, but didn’t know how to get the right people into their set-ups or didn’t have the resource to hire additional headcount. We are concerned about the risks businesses, organisations and their customers take when unknowingly recruiting the wrong, apparent Nutrition Professional – it’s certainly not an easy field to navigate!
We have great people, properly trained, crying out for opportunities and organisations needing access to robust evidence-based resource for their organisations. We saw the opportunity to link the two. Whenever we get together the ideas flow, and before the end of the evening we had mapped out what we wanted to achieve. We decided we were going to try and do something about it.
We believe there is a significant challenge for organisations to find and access great nutrition expertise in ways that fit with their changing needs and the external environment. At Nutrition Talent, we want to make sure the right professional, with the right training, is in the right place to make evidence-based change happen. We want to support them to be vocal, to make change happen and to progress the field.
That means working with organisations to fulfil not only full-time positions, but also short-term project-based work and temporary projects to meet the needs of both employer and our Nutrition Talent community.
We want to bring confidence and support to the expertise within our Profession, to make sure the maximum impact on health is achieved wherever possible. We want to support the experts to make big change happen in health. Working together, the possibilities are endless.
From our varied experience, be that as Chair of the Nutritionists in Industry group for close to 5 years or from managing teams of talented nutritionists, we heard our peers express difficulty in knowing what their next career move should be, or how to gain the required skills to pivot into a different type of role, not to mention how difficult it is for recent graduates to start out in the profession.
There has never been a set career path in nutrition, which can be both daunting and really exciting. We’ve always enjoyed the stories of our nutrition colleagues and friends about what route they took to reach their current position. Many of whom kindly shared these tales with recent graduates at our event ‘Inspiring your nutrition career’ earlier this year. And it stands out how different all these stories are. Many years ago when we obtained our First Class Hons degrees in Food Science and Nutrition, we battled with some perceptions that the degree to do for a successful career was Dietetics. Having both had hugely varied and successful careers to date, we were horrified to hear these conversations are still happening amongst degree students today. We want to make sure our fellow Nutritionists can confidently envisage their career and are supported in finding the right opportunity that is reliant on their unique knowledge and personal abilities.
Amongst the falafel and halloumi that night, a gem of an idea was seeded, and just a few short months later, Nutrition Talent was born! Whether you are a company needing robust resource or a Nutrition professional seeking inspiration and opportunities, do get in touch and let’s make change happen together.