Zita McCarthy started her career in Kerry Group on a two-year graduate programme in 2012. “With the programme you were working a normal job and at the same time participating in a management course, where every quarter of the year you spent a week in Dublin in the Irish Management Institute attending lectures,” says Zita about the experience.

After finishing the graduate programme, Zita became a technologist for Kerry Group in 2014 and moved to Denmark with the company, where she took part in a dairy project. She has since returned to Ireland and is working in Naas.

Zita, who loved science in school, studied a Level 8 Food Science Technology degree in University College Cork. It was during her time in university that Zita became interested in Kerry Group.

Diverse

“My job is very diverse,” she says. “I could be in Naas in the lab doing food trials one day and another day I could be going to visit a customer. There is a good bit of travel and, of course, a certain amount of computer work and report writing.”

For those who are contemplating a career like Zita’s, she says: “If you are interested in science and enjoy the science of food and how different ingredients work together, then this is the job for you. There’s a real creative part to my job too and I think it’s a brilliant choice.”

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Special focus: agri careers