A job of work

Clare Meldrum, 28, has been with Mayday Recruitment for four years. A year ago she was made branch manager for one of the company's central London offices.

I am a morning person and tend to get up at around 5.30am. I have a cup of tea and spend half-an-hour getting ready for work. After a 45-minute Tube ride from my home in Rotherhithe, I get to the office in Shoreditch at 7am.

The first thing I do is listen to my messages, which are mainly from clients making bookings. Mayday is open from 7am on Monday and 7.30am, Tuesday to Friday, and as many as 30 people arrive first thing looking for work. We run a breakfast club where they can have something to eat and watch television, and it's my job to get them work for the day.

We have 30 to 40 bookings daily, for which we have to find suitable staff. We tend to place an equal mix of people at all levels including hospitality staff, waiters, baristas and chefs.

We start the interview process at 10am, and see between 10 and 15 people a day. Candidates who have seen our advertisements in the national press or find us through word of mouth come in, and we test their skills. If we interview someone and take them on, we try to find them a placement for the following day.

The types of people we take on vary. Many are students who want work in the evening. We also have a lot of foreign workers, particularly from Australia, who want to travel and use their skills while seeing the sights. As long as people have the right qualifications, references and the right to work in this country, we will take them on.

It is our priority to make sure the clients are happy, and it's nice to have such a huge database of people, fully trained and ready to work. In addition to our offices in central London, we also have a training centre in Shepherd's Bush, so we can make sure the people we place have got the right skills.

I usually go out for half-an-hour to clear my head at midday, and then come in and eat sandwiches at my desk.

From 2.30pm I call all the clients to check the bookings. I try and get as much feedback as possible about how the employee is performing, and also to ascertain whether the person is going back for the rest of the week. It's a customer-care issue and it allows us to give feedback to the employee to help them in the future.

Luckily, we have had quite a few bookings already for Christmas, and I feel we are really ready to deal with this demanding period. For most of the year, we send out between 120 and 150 staff a day, but this increases by 50 during Christmas, when hospitality and waiting staff are particularly in demand.

For the first couple of weeks after the events of 11 September, there was a slowdown in business, with some financial institutions in particular holding fewer functions, but now clients want to get on with life.

Many US firms that use Mayday for conferences and functions in the UK cancelled events immediately after the attacks, but since the end of September we have not really seen a change in the demand for staff.

People realise what happened has happened and there is nothing they can do, even though it has obviously been a very upsetting time.

I usually leave the office around 5.30pm, depending on the volume of business. Fridays are absolutely manic, as all the temps come in to collect their pay slips, so sometimes we'll work until 7pm, especially around Christmas-time.

I usually get home around 6.30pm and cook dinner. I tend to eat loads of pasta and salad. I get to the gym a couple of evenings a week, and on Fridays I go out to the local pub with some people from work to unwind.

During the week, I go to bed around 11pm. My weekends are spent relaxing at home, shopping in Blackheath or going out with friends.

interview by Hannah Giles

Mayday Recruitment

2 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6PG
Tel: 020 7377 1352www.maydaygroup.co.uk
Chief executive: Sarah Anderson
Managing director: Nicola Platt
Director: David Goldfarb
Non-executive director: Michael Anderson
Finance director: Cathy Humphrey
Number of staff: 43
Offices (all in London): Shoreditch High Street, Great Chapel Street, and a training centre in Shepherd's Bush
Business: Mayday Group provides human resource solutions to all parts of the catering industry, from a few hours' cover to permanent positions at all grades

Just a minute…

What is your favourite restaurant? I like Pont de la Tour near London Bridge. It has great food and service, with a nice bar area, and is really good for special occasions. I'd be broke if I went there every day, though.

What was your worst experience at work? A few years ago, when I was 19, I spent six months in Geneva working in a four-star hotel. They put me on reception with no training, and it was a complete nightmare, especially during the first week, trying to cope with all the calls in French while trying to sound professional.

Who do you most admire? Sarah Anderson. She set up Mayday 16 years ago and I admire her long-term work in the community, and how she has encouraged people to get into catering.

Who would you like to invite to a dinner party and why? Jude Law. Speaks for itself…