WANTED: Window Cleaner For The Shard

Been looking to take your career to the next level?

Fancy getting paid to abseil down The Shard? It needs a window cleaner - A social enterprise is looking for people with a head for heights who want to be The Shard’s window cleaners. The unique opportunity was posted on jobs site Good People Connect, and pays up to £20,000 a year, depending on experience. You need to have abseiled before for the role, working 6am to 2pm six days a week, and need to be unemployed and living in Southwark. Here’s a video showing what the window cleaners at The Shard do:

WANTED: Window Cleaner for The Shard - Consider yourself a frustrated high-flyer? Been looking to take your career to the next level? Fancy peering through the glass ceiling from the other side for a change? Well this could be the role you’ve been looking for!

Social enterprise Good People Connect is looking for talented people with around five years of window cleaning experience to help maintain London’s foremost monument to wealth – The Shard. The deal is six days a week, around £20k a year, with a bucket and squeegee provided. Oh, and you have to live in Southwark. Talk about a high bar to entry. See the full job description below or here.

Hideously risky poorly paid job puts banking compensation into perspective: How much should you get paid for dangling on a rope and cleaning windows up to 360m above ground level? More pertinently, how much should you get paid for dangling on a rope and cleaning windows 360m above ground level when you also have -

a. Five years’ experience in this art.

b. Willingness to work six days a week.

c. A qualification in working at heights?

Try….£320 – £390 ($535 – $662) per week. This is how much is currently being offered to ‘experienced vertical window cleaners at the Shard,’ the new iconic landmark on London’s South Bank. Needless to say, this is less than half the amount typically paid to front office summer interns at investment banks, who have yet to leave university.

Knowing how little the Shard’s cleaners are paid may not do much to directly further your finance career. However, it may make you feel more appreciative of what you’ve got – our survey earlier this year suggested that 40% of bankers in the City of London were unhappy with their bonuses for 2013.

Richard Miranda, a spokesperson for GoodPeopleConnect, the social recruitment agency which is advertising the Shard-cleaning positions, says they’ve had ten applications so far. The level of pay is fairly typical for window cleaning, even at heights, says Miranda. “We don’t set the prices – we just make sure that we don’t deal with zero hours contracts and that it will lead to long term sustainable employment,” he says.

In 2012, a window cleaner at the Shard had to be rescued after his ‘cradle’ swung wildly in a gust of high wind. And yet it could be worse – the jobs could be at Pret a Manger. 

More Shard news here.

Manchesters High Rise Guys

Window of opportunity: Extreme window cleaners Anthony Marshall and Dave Smith give one of the UK's tallest building a spring clean.

Don't look down! Pics reveal life as a window cleaner of Manchester's tallest building Beetham Tower... 500 feet up: Enjoying the breathtaking view of Manchester’s skyline from Beetham Tower’s 47th floor should be the perfect way to relax – but not when you’re hanging on the outside of the building 500 feet in the air. You won’t find the traditional ladder and bucket anywhere in sight when this pair of fearless daredevils start cleaning windows.

David Smith, 32, and Anthony Marshall, 33, instead dangle from abseil ropes when assigned to polish the windows of one of Britain's tallest apartment blocks. Their average workday could come out of a heart stopping scene from Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol where agent Ethan Hunt played by Tom Cruise abseils down the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. But David and Anthony have taken a shine to their foam, scrub and polish treatments on the sides of the glass-fronted Beetham Tower.

JUST PASSING THROUGH: Daredevil cleaners David Smith and Anthony Marshall.

The landmark 47-story building stands a total of 169-metre high and bemused drinkers at swanky bar Cloud 23 – on the 23rd floor – hoping to enjoy the best view of the city regularly get a shock when a sponge covers the skyline 250ft above the ground. David and Anthony completed a strict abseiling training course before being allowed free reign to clean the windows - and take in the breath-taking views each morning. Their boss Tony Camilleri, 51, from Salford, who runs Tudor Contract Cleaners, said: "The lads absolutely love it. It's got to be the best job in window cleaning.

THAT'S NOT TWO BIG PIGEONS: Not your traditional bucket and ladder job.

"They aren't running through backyards with a ladder like I was when I started, they're seeing some of the best sights in the country. Not many people get to say they've been up to the top of Wembley Stadium. "In the summer they go rock climbing. It's their hobby. It's like being a footballer which starts out as your hobby then you get paid for it. So they came to me with their skills and I trained them up and taught them how to clean windows."

Tony said he began teaching his staff to abseil when his soldier cousin came back from the Falklands war 25 years ago and asked for a job. "I asked him 'what can you do' and he said he could abseil," Tony added. "That's when I stopped using traditional cradles and started using rope abseils. ''Now we have people wanting to do it the other way round. We have local window cleaners who want to progress in the company and they ask to do abseiling. If they pass the test then they can.

UP THERE? The fearless abseilers have a head for heights.

But with health and safety officials always keeping a beady eye open, Tony makes sure his men scaling some of the country's biggest landmarks are trained to the highest standard. "We even need to do health and safety assessments on how to make a cup of tea," he said. "That's not even a joke. We go from that to having abseilers on the roof of Beetham Tower." Father-of-four Tony decided to clean on his own 30 years ago after managing to pick up a contract for the Portland Hotel in Manchester. After working seven days a week for five years on his own - cleaning a different hotel each weekday - Tony managed to take on new staff and Tudor now clean every hotel in Manchester. Business nous runs deep in Tony's family, with the name 'Tudor' coming after a popular café his father ran in his home city of Salford.

HOW'S IT HANGING? All in a day's work for David and Anthony.

He added: "The Tudor Group are close knit. Without all the staff and the people I have around me we wouldn't be where we are today." Beetham Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Europe, opened in 2006. The space up to floor 22 is occupied by a plush four-star Hilton Hotel, with the remaining floors let as apartments. Former Manchester United and Everton footballer Phil Neville recently had an apartment occupying three linked stories on the market for £4million - or an eye-watering £15,000 per month, with the tower's designer Ian Simpson owning the top-floor penthouse which even contains an olive garden.

At 250ft up there's a bar called Cloud 23 - on the 23rd floor - where drinkers hoping to enjoy the best view of the city get a shock when a sponge covers the skyline.

When I'm cleaning windows - 500ft up: Meet the two rock climbers  giving a Spring clean to one of Britain's tallest apartment blocks. The landmark 47-story building stands a total of 550ft high and at 250ft up there's a bar, Cloud 23.

Rock climbers David Smith, 32, and Anthony Marshall, 33, are giving a Spring clean to one of Britain's tallest apartment blocks, the Beetham Tower in Manchester.

Beetham Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Europe, opened in 2006. The space up to floor 22 is occupied by a four-star Hilton Hotel, with the remaining floors let as apartments. Click to enlarge.

Tudor Contract Cleaners employs 250 staff nationwide and scrubs venues such as Old Trafford, Wembley Stadium and London's St Pancras Station. Mr Camilleri said he began teaching his staff to abseil when his soldier cousin came back from the Falklands war 25 years ago and asked for a job. 'I asked him ‘what can you do' and he said he could abseil,' Mr Camilleri added. 'That's when I stopped using traditional cradles and started using rope abseils. 'Now we have people wanting to do it the other way round. We have local window cleaners who want to progress in the company and they ask to do abseiling. If they pass the test then they can.

Tudor Contract Cleaners employs 250 staff nationwide and scrubs venues such as Old Trafford, Wembley Stadium and London's St Pancras Station.

When the girls in Cloud 23 saw the cleaners on the windows they had a look of shock on their faces. They were saying "oh my God, there's a man outside the window". For the lads to do that I think they should be paying me rather than me paying them.' But with health and safety rules to comply to, Mr Camilleri makes sure his men scaling some of the country's biggest landmarks are trained to the highest standard. 'We even need to do health and safety assessments on how to make a cup of tea,' he said. 'That's not even a joke. We go from that to having abseilers on the roof of Beetham Tower.'

The father-of-four decided to clean on his own 30 years ago after managing to pick up a contract for the Portland Hotel in Manchester. Beetham Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Europe, opened in 2006. Until The Shard, which stands at 1003ft tall, opened in London last year, it was the tallest residential building in Britain. The space up to floor 22 is occupied by a four-star Hilton Hotel, with the remaining floors let as apartments. Former Manchester United and Everton footballer Phil Neville recently had an apartment occupying three linked stories on the market for £4million and the tower's designer Ian Simpson owns the top-floor penthouse which even contains an olive garden.

Shard Polishing In London

Tall order: The intrepid crew of window cleaners are mere dots on the 95-storey face of the Shard.

Abseiling cleaners give the Shard a polish, however it's not a good place to drop your bucket and squeegee. Think of it as extreme cleaning — it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted. A specialist crew abseils down the Shard to wash some of its thousands of windows. The 309-metre, 95-storey building, the tallest in Europe, has 11,000 glass panels, creating a huge workload for the companies handling the job. The cleaning crews may be able to give Prince Andrew some tips on what it’s like to be on the outside of the Shard. The Duke of York is due to abseil from the 87th to the 20th floor next month to raise funds for the Outward Bound Trust and the Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund. Last month fire crews had to rescue a window cleaner who became stuck at the 72nd floor in strong winds days before its official opening.

Walking on glass: Cleaners abseiling the windows of Europe's tallest building.

Harnessed: The rope mechanism that keeps the cleaners safe at high heights.

Brave window cleaners descend 309m Shard to clean 11,000 windows: If you dislike cleaning your windows, spare a thought for the guys that abseiled down the 309m (1,013ft) Shard to wash some of the London landmark's 11,000 windows. The job is probably not a good one for those who suffer from vertigo as it involves trekking down the side of Europe's tallest building. The 95-storey Shard structure has thousands of glass panels, which creates a huge task for the specialist crews that have to clean them. Last month fire crews had to rescue one of these brave souls who became trapped on the 72nd floor due to severe winds. The Duke of York may want to ask the window cleaners for advice on how to cope with the dizzying heights as he is set to take part in a charity abseil on the Shard next month. The royal will raise money for the Outward Bound Trust and the Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund by abseiling between the 87th and 20th floors.

Don’t look down: Window cleaners descend the Shard.