Key Attributes Nonrestaurant Food Servers Need To Succeed In Their Career

by Noah Smith

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Nonrestaurant food servers serve food to individuals outside of a restaurant environment, such as in hotel rooms, hospital rooms, residential care facilities, or cars.

The core tasks that nonrestaurant food servers are likely to carry out include:

Monitor food distribution, ensuring that meals are delivered to the correct recipients and that guidelines, such as those for special diets, are followed.
Clean or sterilize dishes, kitchen utensils, equipment, or facilities.
Examine trays to ensure that they contain required items.
Place food servings on plates or trays according to orders or instructions.
Load trays with accessories such as eating utensils, napkins, or condiments.
Take food orders and relay orders to kitchens or serving counters so they can be filled.

In order to successfully forge ahead with their careers, analysts in a survey carried out by U.S. Department of Labor (via O*NET) have marked out the following as important attributes that nonrestaurant food servers would need. These attributes have been selected from characteristics and requirements strongly associated with the occupation. They are

Abilities: Enduring attributes of the individual that influence performance
Interests: Preferences for work environments. Occupational Interest Profiles (OIPs) are compatible with Holland's (1985, 1997) model of personality types and work environments. Six interest categories are used to describe the work environment of occupations: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. An OIP consists of six numerical scores indicating how descriptive and characteristic each work environment (or interest area) is for an occupation
Knowledge: Organized sets of principles and facts applying in general domains
Skills: These include basic skills, which are developed capacities that facilitate learning or the more rapid acquisition of knowledge. Plus cross-functional skills, which are developed capacities that facilitate performance of activities that occur across jobs
Style: Personal characteristics that can affect how well someone performs a job

We have listed out attributes which were scored 80% or more in terms of importance by the analysts.

Having a strong preference for social work environments. Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
Attribute Type: Interests Score: 90.43%

Being reliable, responsible, and dependable, and fulfilling obligations.
Attribute Type: Style Score: 87.8%

Being pleasant with others on the job and displaying a good-natured, cooperative attitude.
Attribute Type: Style Score: 85.2%