Thursday, December 1, 2011

THREE MOST INTERESTING JOBS




Every now and then its fun to hear about the different things you could be doing with your life. These fun jobs may not come up on your radar very often, if ever, but are some alternative ways to make an income. Get the list here!
CNN Money shares…
1. Frozen-food chef
Company: ConAgra Foods
Employee: Evan Brockman
Job: Product development chef
The beauty of frozen food is that it requires almost no prep time. But every conveniently packaged portion starts with a team putting in time in the kitchen.
One of the culinary experts behind Healthy Choice and other well-known frozen food brands is Evan Brockman. He’s a chef at ConAgra, a company that makes products for commercial foodservice customers and consumer brands such as Chef Boyardee, Slim Jim and Marie Callender’s. “We try to take what we see in a restaurant and do it on the line,” he says. He and his colleagues cook new dishes, then figure out how to meet the price and nutrition constraints of, for example, ConAgra’s Healthy Choice franchise.
Brockman has been cooking ever since he was 18, when he worked as a chef in a restaurant called Billy Frogg’s in downtown Omaha, Nebraska. He later attended culinary school and worked in several other kitchens until he joined ConAgra about two-and-a-half years ago.
But he does more than cook at ConAgra: Brockman and some of the company’s food science experts also work on innovative packaging to make microwavable meals taste as fresh as possible. He recently helped develop packaging that allows customers to steam vegetables separately from the sauce — a solution that he says makes a big difference in the taste.
Brockman says he sometimes grabs a Healthy Choice meal, or two, for lunch on the go. The lemon chicken recipe is particularly good, he says.
2. Dot-Com plant doctor
Company: Home Depot
Employee: Ingar Nygren
Job: Social media store associate
Home Depot is trying to migrate the expertise of its employees in the company’s signature orange aprons to the Web. About six months ago, Home Depot started trolling its stores for experts who could take two days out of the week to work in an office and answer questions from do-it-yourself enthusiasts across the country.
Ingar Nygren was chosen out of a pool of 100 employee experts to serve as a social media store associate. He’s a certified horticulturalist who has been with Home Depot for 14 years. “I’m really passionate about horticulture and landscaping,” he says, “I’ve only ever worked in a nursery.”
Nygren says he has already built up a fan base at his brick-and-mortar store in Hiram, Georgia, and he’s now trying to build a community online as well.
Many of the online inquirers use multimedia to communicate their problems, Nygren says. “I get a lot of `Hey, look at these pictures of my dying plants.’” Nygren can then use those pictures to make a landscaping recommendation such as shifting shade-loving plants out of the sunlight.
While Nygren answers up to 18 questions per day via Twitter and Facebook, he says that Home Depot workers participating in the social media push are encouraged to focus on the quality, not the speed, of their answers. “We might not be the first, but we will be the best,” Nygren says.
3. Express weatherman
Company: FedEx
Employee: Melvin Bradley
Job: Manager, FedEx Express Weather Services
FedEx guarantees fast service no matter what — but, unfortunately, the weather doesn’t always cooperate. That’s why the company has its own team to predict the weather.
FedEx meteorologists monitor 697 planes at over 150 of the company’s 300 airports. The meteorologists have to provide an accurate report within a five-mile radius of any given airport, says meteorology team chief Melvin Bradley. “The New York TV weather guy may say ‘chance of showers.’ We’re not privileged enough to do that — everything has to be a lot more precise.”
Bradley is no stranger to military-style precision — he worked for the Air Force for 20 years before starting at FedEx 19 years ago. “I’ve seen a lot,” he says, “but in weather, you will never see everything.”
The most difficult daily challenge for Bradley’s team isn’t predicting major storms — it’s fog. FedEx and other carriers fly cargo, not commercial, planes. “The cargo airlines pretty much rule the sky at night,” Bradley says. That means that he and his team spend much of their time predicting early morning visibility conditions. If the meteorologists identify a potential problem, they try to notify customers before a shipment ever leaves the ground. “If we don’t, there’s a chance that those packages on that airplane may miss service, and that goes against everything FedEx stands for.”
Get more fascinating jobs at CNN Money!

No comments:

Post a Comment