Tetley is looking for full-time tea tasters to travel the world

Virgin Radio

2 Nov 2021, 10:59

If you consider the best thing about your job to be the tea breaks, then you are going to be very interested in the tea-riffic opportunity that is currently being advertised by Tetley.

The tea company is looking to hire two graduate tea buyers, who will taste up to 300 different teas per day. That is a whole lot of brews! 

Excitingly, the tea tasters will also travel around the world to different tea regions. If anything constitutes a dream job, surely it’s one where you get to drink tea all day and travel the world!

The successful applicants will initially be supporting the tea buyer and work closely alongside the tasters to develop their palates. Once they have got their taste buds up to speed, which apparently will take “a few years”, the tea tasters will then get the chance to travel to tea-growing parts of the world in order to build relationships with suppliers and learn even more about the tea manufacturing process. 

Other slightly less glamorous responsibilities will include doing admin work and hitting weekly deadlines, as well as working with the rest of the team to forecast market trends and negotiate contracts. The job also includes collating information on the availability of tea, working closely with the shipping department to monitor stocks, and managing and interpreting data using Excel.

If you’re interested in this role, (and who wouldn’t be?) and fancy the idea of tasting teas and travelling around the globe, then you’ll need a degree (2:2 or above), have strong analytical skills and a good attention to detail, as well as strong planning, time management and organisation skills. You’ll also need to have excellent communication and interpersonal skills, and cultural and commercial awareness.

The job advert also says, perhaps somewhat unnecessarily, that because tasting tea is a key part of the role, “you need to have a clear passion for everything tea related.”

However, while you need to really love the drink, you don't need to already be expert. A spokesperson for Tetley spilled the tea on the role, saying (via Metro): “You don’t need to have a refined palate when you’re starting out, this is developed through our training and mentoring programme.”

The full-time positions will be London-based. If you think you’ve got what it takes, then be warned, applications close this Thursday (November 4th), so you probably don’t have time for too many tea breaks while getting your CV together. 

You can find out more here.