Fancy working with Samuelsons??
OK, so keep reading. We'll give the unvarnished truth. Actually we'll try to paint a worse picture than reality so you know the worst possible scenario. No surprises: we have nothing to hide.
The things everyone wants to know:
Hours: We're pretty flexible. We'd rather have 20 people working 4 hours and be happy and energised than 8 people who are tired, unmotivated and would rather not be here. We're not a big enough company to be able to 'carry' people working at half-speed.
Pay: It's minimum wage. That's £6.31 for over 21's, less if you're younger. If you're 18-20 then it's £5.03, and 16-18's is £3.72. We don't like the under 21 minimum wage, we'd rather pay more. BUT you have to be able to work at the same rate as someone being paid more. If you're half the speed and earning the same amount then that's not really fair on us, nor your colleagues. SO, assume that if you're under 21 you get minimum wage until you've proven yourself able to keep up with the big-dogs!
Terms of work: ou will work on a self-employed basis. You will get paid by us, and sometimes you will get paid by customers that we contract bottle for depending on the contract we have with them. This means that you must register as self-employed and you must pay your own national insurance & also tax via the HMRC tax scheme which you do in arrears - i..e for the work you do in April-April 2013-14 you complete the tax return online at any point between April 2014 and January 2015.
Pay-schedule: At the latest it will be monthly. We will however endeavor to pay bi-weekly but this cannot be guaranteed. Payment from Samuelsons will be by cheque, by our customers normally via bank-transfer.
ow long is the job for? At the moment we honestly don't know. We're growing VERY rapidly at present! We normally have a quiet period over winter - but we don't know if that will happen this year. You can work for us for a couple of days/weeks if you'd like (as long as we know in advance we're happy with that), or you could work for us for years!
The work:
Well, it's quite simple. Nothing we do is rocket-science, but it must be done well or not at all. Remember that we are dealing with a food product and therefore half-measures will be a BAD thing!
You'll spend a lot of the day in a lab-coat and a hair net. You could be juicing lemons, limes or ginger, or perhaps bottling our lemonade. Maybe you'll be labeling products. Pretty much anything that we do here will be a team effort.
We're a small family firm, and we need to be able to trust you to simply do the job that is required. Sometimes that may be a lot of fun, sometimes it may not. There will be aspects of the job that will be repetitive and at a frenetic work pace, there will be some jobs that are done at a slower pace and will feel like a holiday. We ask you to do everything to the best of your ability and to help your colleagues do the same.
Where are you? We don't give the address, as we have a lot of 'nickable' things, but we're somewhere between RAF Benson and Wallingford. We used to be just outside of Witney itself until a factory move at the last minute forced us to move a little further afield.
Why work for us?
For some people it's simply that they want some short-term work. For others they want to get out of the house and the hours we offer fit in around child-care/schools etc. Some people just love it. Others are family, and, well, they don't get much of a choice. They'll be the grumpy looking ones ;-)
We make award winning products out of a rustic little factory, and a great part of the enjoyment people get from the job is knowing that they could go to a Michelin starred restaurant, or a local Co-op or somewhere like Blenheim Palace and see the product that they had a hand in the making of right there on the shelf.
So what now?
OK, if you're still interested then we ask all of our potential workers to pop along and give us an hour of their time on the factory floor as a part of the job interview. It makes sure you know what we do and that you're happy with it. We'll then have a chat and go from there. We'll do this on a Tuesday and Thursday until further notice. Drop us an email to jonathan@samuelsonsofwitney.co.uk and tell us what day & time you'd like to come in, and the date. We'll do the interviews with no more than 4 people per day and between the hours of 11am and 3pm.