Internships, jobs, careers, consultancy/interim posts with:-

Harris Watson Holdings
&
Waterlinks Investments

The companies you might work for
(skip to the jobs listing and come back if you like)

John Harris & Sue Watson rescue unloved and unwanted companies. A better word might be resurrect, as there is no propping up of lost causes. John and Sue look to see if there is a product, a market and a commercial future before they step in. Often they are buying small or medium sized companies out of conglomerates in which they no longer fit. In the last months or years of ‘not fitting’ the company can often lack attention and investment of both money and people. Then it’s a question of finding the company’s commercial core, trimming out the non-essential activities, and picking the right people to take it into the future.

Sometimes it doesn’t work and the company has to be liquidated or a buyer found who values it for different reasons. Sometimes it works so well that explosive growth becomes the problem. Fifteen years on, Harris Watson (HW) and Waterlinks Investments (WI) own fifteen companies employing 1500 staff. The split between HW (Engineering) and WI (Retail Textiles) is largely cosmetic. It stopped buyers of the engineering products worrying about purchases being wrapped in ruffles, and for the buyers of textiles, that garments would be covered in greasy fingerprints. Or something along those lines. We tend to refer to the whole Group as Harris Watson Holdings

If there’s anything that ties all the companies together, other than John and Sue’s conviction of their commercial future, it’s design. Both engineering and textile design, predominantly of British origin, it has resulted in product, brand or market leadership despite the relatively small size of the companies.

Have a look at the websites; in some cases a make-over is long overdue (see Job Vacancies!): Viyella – first textile company in the world to patent its product; or Hoffman Engineering – global leaders in the technology of the conditions of low light.

If you want a pre-packaged career with a blue-chip who will teach you how to do it – stop reading now. If you’re hunting for a job where you’ll be at the heart of making things happen, under conditions ranging from survival to growing like gangbusters, learning from the mistakes you make as you try to do things that haven’t been done before – we should talk. Because another thing that ties the companies together is a need for bright brains.

And you’d better be happy with travel: inside the UK where our locations run from the Scottish Borders down through the Lake District, the Midlands, London, Bath and all the way to Dorset; and outside the UK where we have plants or sales outlets in the US, Germany and China, with plans for more. And, of course, customers everywhere.

www.harriswatson.co.uk  | www.waterlinksinvestments.co.uk

Read Me Before Applying

At the bottom of the page you’ll find links to the descriptions of the vacancies we have and the application forms we’d like you to fill in, but first - a few important comments common to all of these:

Are you a contender?

We think most recruitment processes take far too long. So we undertake to let you know if you are a contender (or not) within 7 days of receiving your Application Form via this website.

Degrees and other qualifications

We’re not hung up on degrees etc but they are one way of proving you know your stuff. So, if you haven’t got a degree in IT you’ll need to show us the computer you built or the software you wrote or … And if you haven’t got a qualification in Art & Design you will have a portfolio, or photos of the interior design work that people have asked you to do, or, for whatever you’re telling us you can handle … a compelling track record.

Application Forms

We don’t think too highly of that great recruitment institution, the CV. It’s not easy to make a cv speak to all the things that you are, or could be. Instead, we rely on having a different application form for each job. The form is designed to allow you to talk about your ‘fit’ with the particular requirements of the job (and the description of the job is our best attempt to give you a feel for what that fit might be like).

The Perfect CV

One of the reasons that CVs don’t count for much with us is that tradition says they should be perfect: nobody ever worked for a rubbish company or a boss they couldn’t get on with - it’s always perfect – and unrealistic. We want people who’ve made mistakes (and preferably learned from them) and we want people to be able to talk about it.

Rescue for you

So (following from The Perfect CV) if your career with us takes a tumble or gets stuck, we’ll do our best to help you move on, whether within the Group or without. And we have someone centrally whose job it is to do this.

Development & Training

We believe that you’ll learn most ‘on the job’ – given the right challenges, boss and colleagues. On top of that we try to get a selection of our best people together for a few days each year, for a development experience and to share what’s going on across the Group. This is in addition to any training arranged for you by your local management.

Intelligence and other tests

We want to make sure that you have the best chance of fitting, both the job and the culture of the company. So later in the process, we may invite you to take some relevant tests.

The Small Print

We are of course an Equal Opportunities employer; we are looking for talent, not types.