How To Get A Contract For Cleaning Services: Fill & Download for Free

Since I work within the UN system, I prefer to go anonymous.There are two kinds of staff in my UN agency: General Service staff (“G staff”) and Professional staff (“P staff”). The first step will be to decide which kind of staff you want to be.G staff are basically the guys that keep the system running - most commonly secretaries, technicians, maintenance staff, but also warehouse packers, cooks etc. They are only recruited locally at the duty station.Some examples (not at all exhaustive):A typical secretary would be a G-4. These days, they are referred to as “Team Assistants”, covering a broad range of clerical duties including travel arrangements, filing, organizing workshops, etc. In more technical areas, a laboratory technician or electrician would also be around G-3 or G-4. With experience, they can become G-5.A G-5 usually is the assistant to a Director rather than a Section Head (the Director is usually the boss of 3–5 Section Heads within a Division), or his work is somewhat more specific and/or technical. A G-6 will be a very experienced technician, or an Administrative Assistant handling important divisional matters such as recruitment, budget and finance, resource planning etc.On the lower end, a G-1 will be e.g. a warehouse packer, a G-2 a laboratory attendant (mainly cleaning the lab), and G-3 would be a cook, mail messenger, junior lab technician - and often an entry-level grade for newcomers placed on G-4 jobs.The other category is P staff:They will most often be scientists or senior technicians, engineers, translators, or senior administrators of entities entailing hundreds of people. P staff are recruited from around the world and paid very much more than G staff; however, their tenure at the UN agency is usually limited to several years (with exceptions). Pretty much all managers are on the P-4- or P-5 level, divisional directors D-1 or D-2. “D staff“ is rarely used, Directors “count as P staff”.Young graduates with the right scientific background will often start as P-1 (really fresh out of school - no experience). P-2 is for example a junior scientist with some experience, and P-3 a fairly broad grade of established staff with routine experience. Senior scientists are often P-4, equal to junior managers (e.g Team Leaders).So from the above, your first question is: G or P? Personally, I am lucky to live in a city with a UN agency and being employed there as a G staff, which already pays very nicely.Yes. The pay is nice. That is a reason why it is not easy at all to enter the UN system. Many people want in. And vacancies are almost always distributed amongst people already in there.Now you’ll understand why I went anonymous. It is close to impossible to get in there without a “door opener”, be it G or P level. The recruitment processes between the staff categories differ considerably, and since I am a General Service staff member, my further lines will be more from a G staff perspective.In my case, it was a long-time friend of my Dad within the system who told me exactly what to write into the online Personal History Form (UN slang for CV), how to write it, and where exactly to send it (yes, at the time I still snail-mailed it!). He or she told me what to wear, which questions to expect, and so on. With this person’s help (and him/her “supporting” me internally), I managed to land a short-term G-3 contract for three months. A humble assistant secretarial job with lots of photocopying and really quite mundane clerical tasks. But it paid me way over $2,000 p/m - NET! (2005)I went on for almost five years of short-term contracts. I was never “too good” to photocopy thick documents or pack boxes if the needs of the office required it. You must show willingness and dedication, and endure fear about your next contract extension, possibly for years. You also learn a lot of interesting things, learn what is needed in here, and can apply that knowledge. You must be generally willing to eat humble pie, which does not mean that you allow people to sh** on you. But don’t consider any mundane tasks “beneath you” at the beginning.You must also prepare to initially switch jobs often. At the beginning, I was always the stopgap for this secretary on maternity leave, that sick lady, this guy on a career development reassignment. That’s great. You quickly learn many different things.But once you have managed to enter the system and prove yourself for a while, the most important step is getting a fixed-term contract. The recruitment process for short-term contracts is comparatively unbureaucratic, designed to quickly obtain replacements for staff on sick leave/other assignments/who have retired etc.However, for a fixed term, you need to formally apply for the job officially advertised on the UN agency’s web site. You will compete against dozens of internals and hundreds of externals (whose chances are negligible). You must “fear” the internal competitors more…Often enough, you will have done a great job on your temporary post, but now the time has come for it to be officially advertised. Perhaps the guy you have been replacing (because he was himself temporary at a higher grade level) now got the “higher job for real”, and now you can do the same. Apply for your own job! To get it for real.You will be confronted with the fact that 360 others also want that job. But since you have already kept the chair warm at the desk for a while, your chances of getting it are very, very high if you have done a good job. They are never 100%, though.And you will be confronted with - waiting.Getting a fixed term as General Service Staff (Professional less so) rewards you with a very strong contract and very high job security. But between the button click of sending off your application and actually being interviewed (whether for the job you are already sitting on, or another one, if you are invited for an interview at all) three months can easily pass. When you exit the interview feeling fairly confident, you must still prepare to wait two and a half to four months for that precious e-mail informing you that you got the job. Seriously. So be patient.You might also know beforehand that your current job has a time stamp (maternity leave - she will be back), so you will be applying for lots of jobs other than your current one, those already having been advertised in the system. Be prepared that you may submit about 25 job applications and attend 7 interviews before you get the “Yeah, baby!” (my experience)Wow…not sure how focussed this article was…I am writing it today because I had the privilege of being promoted recently to a higher G staff level. And I have a secure long-term contract. It has been quite a battle within the UN system to get to where I am now. And I can still move further up, but I will give it a rest for a while now.Good luck, applicants! Maybe my info above gives you helpful ideas…

You want to know something you probably won’t learn in business school?The more mundane and unsexy your business is, the more profit it makes.Think about it.What’s sexy about waste management? Nothing – but it made Wayne Huizenga Et al billionaires.What do you think the going price is for disposing of nuclear or hazardous waste materials? Right now, it costs $38 billion or more to store nuclear waste in the United States.The most millionaires aren’t in the tech space. They’re in heavy industries such as oil and – get this – accounting.The person locked in the back office crunching numbers all day? They’re more likely than any of your neighbors to become millionaires.Get boring - not exciting. The young ones all want to start a sexy business. That’s your opportunity to start something unsexy and profitable. Everything from fitting pipes and electrical wiring counts as a boring business.Here are a few more examples:Insurance:My goodness is insurance is lucrative. Do you know they have different accounting requirements than other businesses? It’s basically a black box. It may be hard to get it off the ground (aren’t all businesses) but once you hit a critical mass of customers – you’re a juggernaut.Construction:We’ve been building since the dawn of time and will continue to build until the end of time. Two thousand years ago, it was the romans building roads to distant lands. Today, it’s single family homes and skyscrapers.It doesn’t matter.Everything from infrastructure to moveable homes is fair game.Cleaning:Cleaning services are surprisingly lucrative. The hardest part is landing contracts or repeat customers. Once you learn how to set up your pipeline, you’ll enjoy high margins. It’s a volume business. The more you do the more you make – period.Manufacturing:Small scale high quality manufacturing commands a premium these days. Fifty years ago, it was about the mass produced products that everyone could get. Everyone was the same. Now, it’s about being unique. Small batch production runs of expensive limited edition items are incredibly valuable.Percy outConnect with me on Quora to get all my answers

There are a number of factors that go into a restaurant choosing Coke or Pepsi.Obviously, the big chain restaurants have a contract with one of the brands so even a franchisee doesn’t have a choice.Pricing can vary a great deal geographically. A restaurant owner may personally prefer Coke over Pepsi, but if he finds that he can save thousands of dollars/year because Pepsi is less expensive in his area, the financial motivation can outweigh other factors.Service. This might be the biggest reason for mom and pop owned restaurants to choose Coke over Pepsi or vice versa. The service aspect is not just about sales and delivery. Often times, Coke and Pepsi, either directly or through a third party vendor, will supply the dispensing equipment free of charge or at a great discount as long as you continue to order the syrups through them. This includes fountain machines and soda guns for bars. They will provide the compressors, racks, pumps, head units, guns, and manifolds, and install and plumb in the soda lines and the gas lines to the CO2 source. Sometimes they are willing to supply the ice bins and other bar equipment. This can save a new restaurant thousands to tens of thousands in startup costs. Then, what kind of service will they provide on the equipment? If the local Coke guy says he will guarantee a service call within 48 hours of reporting a problem, but the Pepsi guy says he guarantees a technician will arrive within 12 hours, Pepsi is going to get more contracts. Again, this varies regionally, and Coke provides better service than Pepsi in some geographic areas.Sometimes it’s a matter of convenience. If a restaurant is using a particular food purveyor for most of its product purchases, and they happen to carry only Coke products, it is more convenient to order syrup through them instead of placing special orders with another purveyor. I know of a beer tap cleaning service that is also a Coke supplier that will give bars and restaurants discounts on tap cleaning services if they purchase Coke products through them.Brand Loyalty. I grew up in a small-medium town with a Pepsi bottling plant. Everybody had a brother/neighbor/sister-in-law/friend that worked in this plant. At the grocery stores, including Walmart, Pepsi has three time the amount of shelf space than Coke. Almost the entire town drinks Pepsi products. The locals can forgive the chain restaurants under mandatory Coke contracts, but a local restaurant owner would be crazy to choose Coke over Pepsi.I’m currently the general manager of a bar/restaurant, and I, as well as the owners, would prefer to carry Coke products, not only because we personally prefer Coke, but we believe that Coke and Sprite are better mixers for cocktails than Pepsi and Sierra Mist. However, due to some of the factors mentioned above, we choose to deal with Pepsi.