Hospitality CertificationS That Can Enhance Your Career Path

Finding your true passion in life can be a difficult, frustrating process. Global Foodservice Institute's management certificate can open up a lot of different great career options for you to choose from. Contact us in Boynton Beach, Florida, for more information. We offer our effective courses worldwide.

Get a Great Job In Food Service

Getting an interview is step 1 – that comes from having a resume that jumps out with the specifics the computer and then HR are looking for. THEN there is the interview, having up-to-date information on the industry and the job you are applying for, matching your resume to your appearance and knowledge. FINALLY there is DOING the job once you get it. All your experience, learning and abilities need to back up the resume and the interview. The Global Foodservice Institute (GFI) certifications and the Foodservice Institute training prepare you for all aspects of getting and keeping your job. Then you keep learning, keep growing, and rise to the top. But you don’t rise until you get there, after which it is on you to outwork and outperform your peers. Contact us to learn more about our food service management certifications.

Take a Step Forward In Your Hospitality Career

Select the course you would like to take or just check them out. We suggest getting them all so you can earn the top level, MCFBD. We will send you a DVD with all the PowerPoint classes, but you can check out the YouTube versions for free here.

Students struggle with the math - You can see what that is like by clicking here for the math formulas.

When you are ready to build your career through our program, while we build a link, you can email Ed at ed@ehmanley.com and we will send you information. Once registered and paid, we send you books, DVD and set you up to take the tests when you are ready, all online. We think that there are some lessons you can take from Ed Manley's path from Navy medic to Lt. Commander, Cornell graduate, SUNY and NECB professor. It takes only eight minutes to demonstrate how networking, hard work and a good attitude are the keys to success.

As they say in the investing world, past performance may not be indicative of future results, but we have lots and lots of statistics and testimonials which indicate that certifications DO help you get jobs, better jobs, business for your company, bank loans, and more. You can check out a YouTube page where videos and class slides are shown, so you can get a sense of it, however, we will send you a DVD to study from.

Read Our Testimonials

GFI Disclaimer

Food Service Certifications That Can Enhance Your Career Path

Our focus for over 25 years has been to work with people, young and old, helping them to figure out the slippery slope of getting ahead in an increasingly competitive world. Our experience over a lifetime, gives us few key perspectives to share.

It is a more competitive world today than ever. Looking, walking and talking good doesn’t get it. Why is that?
*Because in 1940, when the census started, 4.6% of people had a Bachelor’s Degree. Today, 2% have a Doctorate. 1/3 of American’s have a Bachelors, 9% a Masters. For the top promotions in the military, at least half the candidates have degrees, and every one to the same schools at various ranks. So, how do you make yourself stand out? Add certifications, they are an obvious reason for the screening process to say you deserve a face-to-face interview. Some don’t like when we quote the stats, so we will just say that we have clear evidence that for senior enlisted promotions, those with certifications (ours we know, but we expect any legitimate certs) get promoted at a higher rate. And it just makes sense, there’s no losers going up for those ranks, so a separator is critical.
You don’t yet know what you want to do with your professional life.
Our suggestion is to take life as it comes, reaching rungs on the ladder as you go along. Never seen a job application that asked how many semester hours you had. Finish things – HS, AA, BS and if you can, get a Masters because “everybody” you compete against at the top has a Bachelors. But sometimes they just ask, “do you have a degree.” So get at least an Associate. Don’t limit yourself to the things that you have done, think how that same knowledge and skill set might work for another type job. Our VP Dave Zander, a Navy submarine CS, ended up managing grocery stores and drug stores. Ed ran the X-Ray Department at Bethesda, then Asst. Food Service, knowing nothing about either going in. Why? Because the core skill the military teaches us is to organize, manage, make the most out of the least. When you are getting degrees, certifications, courses – get ones that give you a broad range of opportunities.
You never know what will catch the attention of THAT interviewer.
A Navy friend had won a bunch of competitions, and I advised him to take those off his resume, they were not hiring a competition chef. So, he quickly was hired as the executive sous chef at the prestigious Omni-Shoreham in DC. I visited and chatted with the GM about why they picked this person, right out of the military. He said it was the competition experience, which showed them he could work well under the pressure of a high-end kitchen. So, just pile reasons to hire into your resume, that normally gets you a 2nd level look, and then back up your resume by talking with knowledge and authority about your role in their company – have your words back up the paperwork.
With a great resume, you will typically get a more in depth look at a younger age.
They may not hire you for a middle or top job, they will consider putting you on that path. Don’t let age, or rank, be a barrier. Kids are graduating from college in their mid-teens, getting a Masters at 20. So any thought that you need to be a certain rank or age to get training and earn certifications, in the real world makes no sense at all. We’d rather see you waiting for your experience to catch up with the credentials side of your resume, than the opposite. Figure out a way to get your degrees and certifications as young as you can, though it’s never too late.
You have the Foodservice Institute staff to mentor you, review your resume, help you find jobs.
Our professionals at the Foodservice Institute can help you identify a career path and advise you, from our experience, how to get there. We believe the winning combination is college plus certifications. We believe that getting certified early in your career is the very best approach, because, for example, our course takes 8 days. So you can get better jobs and promotions while you are taking the longer road to a degree. If it doesn’t help you to do it that way, for sure it won’t hurt you, so why not. Some people apparently said they got out of the service and tried to get cook jobs and our certifications didn’t help them. Well first of all, they surely didn’t look at the certifications and say, anybody with those certs we won’t hire. Plus we don’t teach people how to cook, we leave that to the military and culinary schools. We teach and certify people to manage.

We've listed some thoughts for your consideration. Weigh them alongside what your corporate headquarters might put out, and you should decide what seems best for you. Corporations tend to paint everyone with the same brush.

OUR OPINION - WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T

NCCA-Approved Certifications

Some will say that you should not consider a certification that has not been approved by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA). While we are not saying this is an untrue statement, we believe that our industry has not yet embraced this process.

If you accept this concept, then you are left with the three certifications that the American Culinary Federation (ACF) has taken through this process—certified executive chef, certified sous chef, and certified executive pastry chef. That's it. Kudos to the ACF for getting 3 of their 14 levels approved (1 per year). Nothing is approved from any of the other industry organizations.

If that is our industry's standard, then you can apply the "NCCA or nothing" thought, but—until then—you need to work with what is out there. National Foodservice Institute's belief is that only 1 out of 10,000 prospective employers in our industry have ever heard of the NCCA, so no one is likely to look at your resume and ask if the certifications are NCCA approved. NCCA is great—it's just not the standard for our industry now or in the near future.

Going to a Culinary School

If your absolute passion is cooking, that's all you want to do, and you are willing to give 150% energy, time and work into it to rise AFTER A VERY LONG TIME to a 6 figure job, then you should consider culinary school. I just stayed at a 4-Star Brand hotel, asked the Omelet Station cook if she was a culinary school grad. Yes, one of the top 2. After her BS in culinary/mgmt. started at $10, they now start you at $11.50. After 4 years up to $14.50 and hopes in 2 years to make supervisor, $15.50. And for that paid closer to $100K than to $50K. But we can't say it better than this Time magazine article:

That's the problem, says Eric Greenspan, rising Food Network star and head chef and owner of the Foundry on Melrose, a high-end restaurant in Los Angeles. He thinks students enroll in the programs hoping to skip to the head of the pack, only to find out that they still have to start at the bottom. In entry-level cooking jobs like that of a line cook or work with a caterer, a typical starting wage is $9 to $10 an hour, Greenspan says. "These kids are paying law-school prices, and [culinary schools] are training them for minimum-wage jobs." He says students would be better off getting their foot in the door with a chef they admire and working very hard to climb their way to the top. "How do rock stars become famous? They work hard. They don't go to guitar schools," he says.

But at that same hotel, another person said the degree from a top culinary school will get you a chance to interview for sure, at which time they will watch you cook. Everyone starts at or near the bottom, but if you work extra hard you go up faster is what the gal said.

PLUS, with respect, the talent that people cooking the military have is organizing and managing, not cooking. They just don't, UNLESS they take it on as an after hours passion like a good number that we know, but that is maybe 2% of everyone we see who do that. So learn too cook, and stop cooking as quickly as you can; manage the place. That's what we teach.

Another Program We Don't Hear Much Good About is the

United Services Military Apprenticeship Program

The United Services Military Apprenticeship Program (USMAP) is available only to members of the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard with caps on how many can participate at one time (400 or 500 for the Navy). USMAP is a 6,000 hour hands-on, on-the-job program where the candidate demonstrates skills to someone who signs off on each skill. 6,000 hours is 150 40-hour work weeks of documented work, but it usually takes about two years to complete—at which point you earn a Department of Labor certificate of completion of apprenticeship.

The brochure has a "sample listing of trades available." Here at Global Foodservice Institute, we don't prepare people for "trades" jobs, so we don't see it as relevant (but some folks in high places do). With more than 10 years of experience teaching thousands of Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard personnel, we've only found a few people who've completed the program and no success stories.

In the past, we've only heard one person ever say that the USMAP program was helpful in his career, so our president, Ed Manley, asked Murphy Greene to tell us how it was helpful. As CS1 Greene completed the various programs, he would proudly send us the certificates he received. We like to dispense the best advice, so—trying to determine why it helped him and no one else—we asked Murphy how it helped him. This was his response:

"I am writing this statement in reference to the USMAP certifications. My experience with USMAP was not what I expected. I certified in all categories of the cooking industry and household management. Once I received all of my certifications and got out of the military, none of these helped because it was a skilled laborer certification and I was looking to be a manager, not a skilled laborer. I spent 6000 hours on some of these. I started back in 2003 and finished all of them in 2009. It looks great on my wall but that's about it. I found that the merchant marines would be a great place to utilize these certifications for their cook jobs, but for the civilian hospitality industry, they do not even recognize USMAP or know what this is. Plus being a "military" apprenticeship program, it doesn't relate. We need the same certifications that civilians would get. A military certification or a military school is not something they can relate to. How it worked—I documented each task that was completed for that week. The majority of the time the task may not relate to what you are doing for that week, so you would have to catch it up whenever you can if you can or go to another location. It would be hard for sailors on a ship that cannot get the task done or get anyone to sign off because they are not qualified. So many of my co-workers at the time did not even want to bother with USMAP. Sometimes the system would be down so you could not log your hours in. Many times the person would just forget and therefore never get it done. So it was just a tremendous hassle all the way around, but I got it and now what?"
—Respectfully, Murphy Greene, CS1 (Ret)

Global Foodservice Institute Credibility

Dr. Joan Johnson, Executive Director, Global Foodservice Institute
"The Global Foodservice Institute (GFI) was established with a home base at the State University of New York (SUNY) Morrisville campus, also referred to as Morrisville State College. Once we had approval of the President of the College we proceeded to have professors from the college write most of the certification exams, using outside professors for several of them, with Pearson Education's test banks as a resource.

The only problem was that, unless the student has a home or record of New York State, the tuition is too high for the military TA program.

Having been a professor at this college for over 20 years, closely involved in curriculum development, I can attest to the strenuous process involved in getting credits approved. The fact that two other college Presidents reviewed the certifications and approved them for being offered on their campuses attests to the validity of the process.

When an employer sees the Global Foodservice Institute at the State University of New York, they know the program is credible. Therefore, the college stands FULLY behind the GFI certifications and the associated training programs which help students prepare."