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Quality Manager
Bristol
£38k - 10% bonus
Short version:
Lovely company seeks enthusiastic quality manager for enjoyable work, probable progression and the shared making of lovely (and safe) food.
The Company
Ahh, the company. They’re lovely. Enthusiastic, friendly. How often do you speak to a technical manager and have them say any of these things…
* “Technical and operations have a great relationship!”
* “The BRC auditor stopped me and said, ‘what really stands out about this place is that your staff are smiling’.” (the best bit about this for me was the TM being baffled because she thought it was normal).
* “Yeah, we have loads of allergens in a small space. I really like it!”
They’re chilled and ready to eat, which has its challenges. But if you want to step up to being a QM, then this is a great chance to do that. How come?
Well, a few.
One. The other people who work in the factory are really engaged. You ask them to change a behaviour for the sake of food safety, and odds are they will happily oblige. This isn’t necessary normal, as you probably know.
Two. The person you’ll be reporting into is super approachable, friendly, and keen to keep the culture in a really positive place. She’s enthusiastic. Also, she has worked her own way up from QA to Technical Manager – so you can follow in her footsteps if you want progression.
Three. You’ll be Quality Manager but there are other parts of the role which can be bolted on as your career progresses. So there’s proper progression.
The Job
You’re a factory facing quality manager. You’re managing some QAs in a chilled food factory making premium products.
What you won’t like
The site was lovingly described to me as “a funny little factory”. You’re making premium chilled, ready to eat products. This means it’s not a walk in the park.
And there’s only around 100 people or so working there.
Why wouldn’t you like that?
Being a bit smaller, people’s roles tend to be less well defined than in a massive business. That means you’re going to have to sometimes stop, speak to the people around you and figure out what to do.
Great if you like to think. Sucks if you just want to do what has always been done.
The culture is great. Why is this bad? Well, it isn’t, but it does mean that if you come in with a load of strongly held beliefs and a condescending attitude, that fitting in is likely to be a challenge. The business is successful.
It’s also quite manual. This means that keeping GMP in line can be more challenging. There’s more done by people than by machines, which will mean you’re going to have to actually manage people, actually check things.
Finally, being smaller, you’ll get involved in things slightly outside the scope of your job spec. If you’re completely against this, then it probably wont work.
In short, if you want to work for a huge business where you have predictability and a well worn path to follow, you might struggle. If you don’t mind some of the chaos than can foster creativity and a shared sense of purpose, you’ll be good.
The Person
In an ideal world, the following is true:
You’re a factory facing quality manager who has worked with chilled, ready to eat foods before and managed people as well. You’re also enthusiastic, and open to learning and new ways of working.
Oh, and a 38k salary plus 10% bonus is going to be enough for you to want to do this job.
What we’ll settle for, though, is probably someone who has some of those.
For example:
You’ve got experience on a chilled, ready to eat site as a technologist. You’ve been managing people on another site.
That’s cool.
You just can’t have none of the experience. The QAs are relatively new, so someone with relevant experience is necessary. However, if you’re stepping up from QA Supervisor or a technologist role, that’s fine.
What to do now
If this sounds like you, then just apply. To boost your chances, write something nice about why you’re right. Or email us.
If this sounds like someone you know, then copy and paste the advert address and email them. You never know, they might get their dream job, and even get you a bottle of wine or something to say thanks. Or not