The journeyman's exam — how you finish your food technician education

The education to intestine technician is completed with a journeyman exam, like most other vocational educations. Here you demonstrate what you have learned through basic and main course, and the assessment is based on what you have actually worked with in your apprenticeship business and at school along the way.

The journeyman's exam in food technician trade is based on the core professional elements you've encountered in the main course — including aftertreatment of casings, pig stomach treatment, quality control and tool and machinery knowledge. In practice, this means you must be able to demonstrate that you master the handiwork, hygiene awareness and quality assessment that a fully trained food technician is expected to have — not just be able to recite theory but show it with your hands.

• 01Go through your notes from school stays, and ask your trainer to go over the topics you're most uncertain about again.
• 02Practice the practical workflows you know will be assessed — preferably under time pressure, as it will be on the test.
• 03Ask for feedback from experienced colleagues while you still have time to improve weak points.
• 04Know your hygiene and safety routines so thoroughly that they are second nature — they typically form part of the assessment.
• 05Ask your school in good time if you are in doubt about the precise form and content of the exam in your course.

At the journeyman's exam a censor or assessment committee judges whether you meet the educational goals of the training. Typically emphasis is placed on both the practical handiwork understanding of hygiene and quality and the ability to explain why you do as you do — not just that you can perform a task but also that you understand the reasoning behind it.

Your training company plays an important role in what leads up to the journeyman's exam. It is largely in daily training that you build the routine and feel that will later be demonstrated to the examiner and a good dialogue with your practice counselor about what you already master and what still needs practice is one of the best investments you can make along the way.

• 01To work too fast out of nervousness thereby compromising quality.
• 02Forgetting to mention hygiene routines because they have become so automatic that you don't think about them.
• 03To refrain from tidying and cleaning on an ongoing basis, even though it is part of the daily routine in real work.
• 04To become so focused on the hand work itself that you forget to explain your choices along the way.

Because the main course in casing technician education covers subjects such as post-processing of small casings, treatment of pig stomachs, quality control, and tool and machine studies, you can expect the journeyman exam to include tasks from exactly these areas. This could, for example, be demonstrating correct procedure from raw casing to sorted and calibrated product, assessing the quality of a batch, or explaining how you safely operate and clean the machines you have learned to work with.

If you pass the journeyman exam you get your professional certificate as proof that you are trained as a gut technician. It is the proof you take with you through your career — whether you stay with the company where you had your training agreement or move on to another slaughterhouse or another intestine processing company. The professional certificate is simultaneously the ticket to the type of positions where experience and professional skill matter more than years on the job market — in a small specialized profession like this a professional certificate rarely collects dust.