Food Service Worker

Food Service Worker

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Charleston, South Carolina

Salary Range: $21.47 - $25.05 Per Hour

Job Summary: This position is located within the Nutrition & Food Service at the VA Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina. The primary purpose of this position is to perform and lead employees in food service operations including food handling, preparation, storage and delivery.

Major Duties:

• Food service lead duties and responsibilities include: Uses proper cleaning solutions to sanitize food preparation surfaces. Conducts final check of trays to ensure correct foods, temperature and portions as appropriate. Ensures trays appear appetizing, and contents are complete including condiments and utensils. Receives, stocks/stores food items accordingly. Leads the food service activities of production and service areas to ensure proper work methods are utilized. Prepares and serves specialized foods and beverages for modified diets. Adjusts quantities of ingredients used when preparing food for individual or larger groups. Plans, organizes and completes food service to patients/customer according to established schedule/regulations. Utilizes sanitation regulations and procedures to prevent bacteria contamination. Reads and understands standard recipes when preparing simple or complex menu items. Applies sanitation guidelines to safeguard food against spoilage and waste. Ensures food service staff adheres to customer service standards. Assembles food items and condiments for hot and cold loading of trays. Scours and scrubs large-size/heavy cooking utensils such as mixing bowls and pots. Unloads and scrapes trays, stacks dishes and utensils for washing. Uses various measuring tools such as measuring spoons and cups when preparing foods. Provides on-the-job training on the use and maintenance of food service tools and equipment. Ensures staff possesses knowledge of food ingredients when preparing specialized foods and using appropriate ingredients. Processes diet order changes electronically. Assists cooks with food preparation of menu items such as cold sandwiches, fillings, fruit and simple salads, coffee, etc. Reviews food trays before delivery to patient/customer. Adheres to safety policies and procedures when performing manual work involving lifting, carrying, transporting and delivering food or other items. Works quickly without accidents while at the same time being attentive to the quality of your work. Recognizes typical health and safety hazards for yourself and other workers around you. Works rapidly and accurately under the pressure of deadlines. Work Schedule: 5:00am-6:30pm variable work hours, rotating days off, include some weekend and holidays (subject to change to meet the need of the agency). Position Description Title/PD#: Food Service Worker Leader/PD99919A Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not authorized

Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 04/30/2026. EXPERIENCE: A specific length of training and experience is not required, but you must show evidence of training or experience of sufficient scope and quality of your ability to do the work of this position. Evidence which demonstrates you possess the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform the duties of this position must be supported by detailed descriptions of such on your resume. Applicants will be rated in accordance with the OPM Federal Wage System Qualification Standards. Experience includes, but not limited to: Takes nourishment inventories, stocking using first in-first out procedures, replacing expired; Provides patients with basic information about modified diets and the nutrition services that are available; Sterilizes equipment and sanitizes work areas; Performs heavy-duty cleaning tasks throughout the food service and related areas; Prepares uncooked food items, such as sandwich spread and salad dressings; Decides what food items to serve for the most common diets when the diet card or tray ticket identifies only the kind of diet called for; knowledge of sanitation standards, such as the need to keep wiping cloths in sanitizing solution and maintaining proper water temperature standards when cleaning dishes; Prevents contamination by cleaning equipment previously used for raw food. SCREEN-OUT ELEMENT: Your qualifications will first be evaluated against the prescribed screen out element, which usually appears as question 1 in the on-line questionnaire. Those applicants who appear to possess at least the minimal acceptable qualification requirement are considered for further rating; those who do not are rated ineligible and are eliminated. The potential eligible are then rated against the remainder of the Job Elements: Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religions; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. Note: A full year of work is 35-40 hours of work per week. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must clearly indicate the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment. Physical Requirements: Work requiring light to moderate physical effort. It may be required to perform heavy work, such as scouring and scrubbing large size cooking utensils and pushing heavy carts and trucks in unloading, storing, and delivering supplies. They are subject to continuous standing and walking, and frequent stooping, reaching, pushing, pulling, and bending. May be required to work on ladders and use powered cleaning equipment. They frequently lift or move objects weighing up to 20 pounds unassisted and occasionally lift or move objects weighing more than 40 pounds with the assistance of others. Working Conditions: The work is performed in kitchen areas where the steam and heat from cooking and dishwashing equipment often cause uncomfortably high temperatures and humidity. The work area is well-lighted but usually noisy from food service activities, and there is danger of slipping on floors where food or beverages have been dropped. Food service workers are regularly exposed to hot liquids, sharp cutting blades, hot working surfaces, and extreme temperature changes when entering walk-in refrigeration or freezing units. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.

How to Apply: Please read the entire announcement and all the instructions before you begin an application. To apply for this position, you must complete the initial online application, to include the initial online questionnaire and submission of the required documentation specified in the How to Apply and Required Documents section. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on the closing date of the announcement to receive consideration. To preview the application questionnaire, click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12946865. The application process is as follows: To begin, click Apply Online to create a USA JOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USA JOBS resume and/or other supporting documents. Answer the questions presented in the application and attach all necessary supporting documentation. Click the Submit Application button prior to 11:59 PM (ET) on the announcement closing date, 04/30/2026. If you are required to complete any USA Hire Assessments, you will be notified after submitting your application. The notification will be provided in your application submission screen and via email. The notification will include your unique assessment access link to the USA Hire system and the completion deadline. Additionally, in USAJOBS you can click "Track this application" to return to your assessment completion notice. Access USA Hire using your unique assessment link. Access is granted through your USAJOBS login credentials. Review all instructions prior to beginning your assessments. You will have the opportunity to request a testing accommodation before beginning the assessments should you have a disability covered under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended. Set aside at least 3 hours to take the USA Hire Assessments; however, most applicants complete the assessments in less time. If you need to stop the assessments and continue later, you can re-use your unique assessment link. NOTE: Your responses to the USA Hire Assessments will be reused for one year (in most cases) from the date you complete an assessment. If future applications you submit require completion of the same assessments, your responses will be automatically reused. Visit the USA Hire Applicant Resource Center for practice assessments and assessment preparation resources at https://support-usahire.opm.gov/hc/en-us. To update your application, including supporting documentation: During the announcement open period, return to your USAJOBS account, find your application record, and click Edit my application. This option will no longer be available once the announcement has closed. To view the announcement status or your application status: https://help.usajobs.gov/how-to. Your application status page is where you can view your application status, USA Hire assessment completion status, and review your notifications sent by the hiring agency regarding your application. Beginning September 27, 2025, Federal agencies will only accept resumes up to two pages in length to comply with the Merit Hiring Plan. Resumes longer than two pages will result in ineligibility for further consideration for the position. USAJOBS will not allow you to upload or build resumes longer than two pages, and you will need to update the resumes in your profile before applying for a job. Resumes should include information relevant to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of the position to which you are applying. VA is unable to make assumptions about qualifications if not clearly listed. Resumes must be legible so they can be reviewed for eligibility, minimum qualifications and other position requirements listed in the job announcement. Your resume must be 5MB or less. We recommend saving and uploading your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and number of pages. We also accept GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, TXT, PDF, ODT or Word (DOC or DOCX). We do not accept PDF portfolio files. We recommend using a sans-serif font size like Lato, if available. Other widely available options are Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Open San Source Sans Pro, Roboto or Noro Sans. Make your page margins 0.5 inches. Consider using 14-point size font for titles and 10-point for the main text in your resume. The resume builder can help you create a resume using these recommendations and uses the information in your USAJOBS profile to help you get started. Helpful Hints for Creating a Two-Page Resume: Prioritize most relevant and recent experience Use concise, results focused language Align language from the job announcement Focus on demonstrating skills and competencies Remove outdated or unrelated experience Use the USAJOBS resume builder Additional guidance on this new requirement and resume building tools can be found at https://help.usajobs.gov/faq/application/documents/resume/page-limit.

Application Deadline: 2026-04-30