A trial day in Tashkent: choosing ten bakers for an industrial bakery before the permits

01 / Trial day

Five in the morning in Cherkasy, seven in Tashkent

At five in the morning the bakery's technologist, Valentyna Mykolaivna, was already at her desk with a laptop and a printed scoring sheet. For her it was an ordinary hour: thirty years at the bakery had taught her to start the day while the town was still asleep. On the screen was a bakery in Tashkent, where it was already past seven: a steel table dusted with flour, scales with the display turned towards the camera, and Ravshan washing his hands and waiting for Sherzod's signal.

There were two cameras. One hung on a tripod above the table and showed the hands and dough from above. The partner's coordinator held the other and brought it closer whenever Valentyna Mykolaivna asked: show me the seam, put it on the scales, cut it open. Sherzod, our Worker Relations Manager for Uzbekistan, stood next to the candidate and translated from Russian into Uzbek only when the person asked him to repeat something.

It was the first of three trial days. Each candidate was paid for the day whatever the result, and by the evening six scores were due on the technologist's sheet. Those scores would decide whom the bakery filed permit applications for. Only ten days earlier Valentyna Mykolaivna had doubted that a baker's hands could be judged through a screen at all.

You cannot see a baker on a CV. You see him on the scales, in the seam of a loaf and in the cut crumb, and all of that can be shown to a camera if you know what to show.

02 / Order

Ten bakers who could not be hired on their word

The industrial bakery in the Cherkasy region had agreed to supply bread to a regional chain of shops, starting in September. For the extra volume it was short of ten bakers: several experienced craftsmen had retired, and younger people with the right experience were not to be found locally. In early June the HR director brought a short request to her first meeting with Olena, who runs client projects at WORKIN: ten bakers with experience of tin and hearth bread, at the bakery by the end of July.

The key requirement came from the technologist. She did not need people who had simply worked in a bakery at some point. She needed people who could divide dough into pieces of equal weight without reweighing each one several times, shape a long loaf with a straight seam and tell from the look of the dough that it was ready for the oven. Almost everyone writes that on a CV, and the only way to check it is to see the work.

Seeing the work at the bakery itself before the permit is not an option. Employing a foreign national without a work permit means a fine for the employer of twenty minimum wages per person, and a trial shift on the production floor is no exception. So the test had to happen while people were still at home, and before the bakery paid for any permits.

Who is needed

10 bakers for tin and hearth bread

Timing

People at the bakery by the end of July

Technologist's condition

See everyone at work before the permit application

Constraint

No trial on the production floor before the permit

03 / Country

Why the bakers were found in Tashkent

The bakery did not name a country, so we weighed the options against our criteria. First, language: the technologist explains the work in Russian and Ukrainian, and a baker has to understand her without a go-between from the first day. Second, experience in bread specifically, not in a confectionery or a restaurant kitchen. Third, the route against the date: from a request in early June to the end of July left less than two months. Fourth, the reserve: the partner had to find not ten people but at least twice that, so there would be a real choice based on results.

Everything pointed to Uzbekistan. Bread is the centre of the table there, and alongside tandoor flatbreads, Tashkent, Samarkand and the regional cities have bread plants and bakeries turning out the tin and hearth loaves familiar in Ukraine. Many bakers in the big cities speak Russian fluently. Citizens of Uzbekistan enter Ukraine without a visa, and a four to seven week route fitted the bakery's deadline even with trial days included. And our licensed partner in Tashkent already had a pool of bakers and a bakery where it runs trial days for cooks and bakers.

The direction had one feature we pointed out to the bakery straight away. Many Uzbek bakers are masters of tandoor bread with excellent hands, but working to a piece weight, with tins and a recipe card can be new to some of them. A CV does not show that difference, and an interview only shows what a person says about himself. So instead of an interview we proposed a paid trial day, and the bakery accepted both proposals together: the country and the trial.

04 / The task

How to make bread visible through a camera

Valentyna Mykolaivna's doubt was a professional one: a baker works with his hands and his feel for dough, and a camera conveys neither smell nor springiness. We did not argue. We asked her to describe the signs she herself looks for when a new baker first steps up to the table. She came up with six points, and together we found a way to show each of them on screen.

The weight of a piece is shown by scales with the display facing the camera. Dough temperature by a probe thermometer the candidate holds up to the lens. Readiness after proving shows when the candidate presses the dough with a finger and the second camera catches, close up, how the dent springs back. Baking quality by a loaf cut in half in front of the lens: crumb, holes, crust. And how a person organises the table and keeps up with the card is visible from the overhead camera all day long.

The technologist built the task from the bakery's recipe cards, simplified to what could be reproduced in someone else's bakery: a wheat long loaf and a rye-wheat hearth loaf. We translated the cards into Russian and Uzbek, and the candidates received them the day before the trial, so nobody would be thrown by an unfamiliar sheet of paper. The scoring sheet had six lines worth up to three points each and one threshold agreed before the trial: a candidate had to score at least two points for dividing to weight and for shaping, or he did not pass, whatever his other scores.

05 / Three trial days

Seventeen candidates and bread they took home

The partner shortlisted thirty bakers from their CVs, Sherzod spoke to each by phone in Uzbek and Russian and invited eighteen to the trial. He explained three things to each of them. The trial is a full working day, and it is paid whatever the result. The candidate pays nothing for taking part, for a place on the list or for the move to Ukraine: Uzbek law allows agencies to charge candidates, but our contract with the partner forbids it. And every candidate hears the result within the same week, with an explanation.

The trial days took place at the partner's bakery in Yunusabad, six candidates a day. The bakery's own baking finishes by six in the morning, so from seven the oven and tables are free. The bakery in Ukraine had agreed the cost of the trial days in the project before the start, and the partner paid each candidate in the evening against a signature. Seventeen came: the eighteenth called Sherzod the day before and honestly said he had already started a job at home.

Candidates took the bread from their trial day home with them. It was a small thing, but it said a lot about how they were treated: they had done a day's work, not sat an exam. Akmal, forty-five, twenty years of them at a bread plant in Samarkand, put his hearth loaf in a bag carefully, like a gift, and told Sherzod he was taking it to his mother to show her that her son still had the knack.

The technologist watched every candidate from the first weighing to the last cut loaf. After each one she added a single sentence to the scoring sheet: the person's greatest strength and what to watch out for. Those sentences proved very useful later, when it came to deciding who would travel and who would stay in reserve.

06 / Selection

Scores, a threshold and the people behind them

After three days the scoring sheet had seventeen rows. Ten candidates cleared the mandatory threshold comfortably and scored highest. Three cleared the threshold but had a weak spot: one had never worked with rye dough before, and two shaped noticeably more slowly than the rest. Together with the bakery we put them in the reserve. Four did not reach the threshold.

The hardest decision concerned Jasur, twenty-seven, from Namangan. He has been working at a tandoor since he was fourteen, and the dough behaved so well in his hands that the technologist several times asked the coordinator to bring the camera closer. But his divided pieces varied by tens of grams, and his long loaf only came out right at the third attempt. Valentyna Mykolaivna's verdict was honest: a master, but not the right fit for this work at the moment. Sherzod explained to Jasur exactly which points had not worked, and Jasur asked to be kept on file for other vacancies.

Ravshan, thirty-eight, twelve years of them at a bread plant in Tashkent, scored highest: not one of his pieces was more than a few grams off the set weight. Akmal from Samarkand scored slightly lower, but he talked with the technologist in Russian better than anyone and understood her at half a word. The bakery asked for him to lead the group.

Each of the thirteen selected and reserve candidates received an information sheet in Uzbek and Russian: the baker position, the bakery's address, the contract term and pay under the draft contract, housing, documents for the border and Sherzod's phone number. Sherzod made a point of telling the reserve candidates that their scores would stand for the whole guarantee period: if someone had to be replaced, there would be no second trial, because the technologist had already seen them at work.

1. 01

   10 bakers

   Cleared the threshold for dividing and shaping comfortably, permit documents filed the same week.

2. 02

   3 in reserve

   Cleared the threshold with one weak spot, scores kept for a replacement under the guarantee.

3. 03

   4 did not pass

   Each was told exactly what had not worked, two asked to hear about other vacancies.

4. 04

   Group lead

   Akmal from Samarkand, twenty years at a bread plant, understands the technologist best.

07 / Position in the permit

A baker from day one, not from month two

When Nataliia, head of our documents team, received the draft employment contract from the bakery's HR department, the position field said: auxiliary worker. The HR director explained the thinking: let people settle in for a month, then we will move them up to bakers. The bakery had done this with local staff for years. With foreign workers that thinking does not work.

A permit is issued for a specific position. If the permit says auxiliary worker and the person stands at the oven as a baker from the first day, that is work on terms different from those in the permit. For the employment centre it is a ground to revoke the permit, and for the employer a fine of ten minimum wages for each such worker. A later transfer to another position is possible too, but only through amendments to the permit, applied for no later than 30 days after the change. So the plan to register people as auxiliary workers and move them later would have meant either a breach or ten amendment applications a month after arrival.

We proposed a simpler route. People had passed the trial as bakers, so the position in the permit was baker from the first day. Nataliia checked that the position existed in the bakery's staffing schedule and made sure the title was identical in four places: the staffing schedule, the certified draft contract, the permit application and the candidate's information sheet. We described the duties in the information sheet using the wording from the scoring sheet, so each person could see that at the bakery he would be doing exactly what he had already shown at the trial.

• the baker position is in the bakery's staffing schedule;
• the draft employment contract certified by the employer uses the same title;
• the permit applications give the same title for all ten;
• the candidate's information sheet has the position and duties from the scoring sheet;
• at the border the person names the same job that appears on the permit copy.

08 / Permits and entry

Ten permits and the word Ravshan said at the border

We had collected the bakery's documents using the company checklist before the trial, so after selection all that remained was to add the candidates' packages: copies of the passport data pages with a certified Ukrainian translation and a colour photo, plus the certified draft contract and proof of payment from the bakery. The trial had confirmed the baking skill, so we did not gather any extra papers that the law does not provide for a permit. We filed for ten permits a week after the last trial day. A decision must be made within seven working days, and all ten were issued within that time.

The employment contract has to be signed no later than 90 days after the permit is issued, so we bought tickets with the permits already in hand and plenty of time to spare. The group of ten travelled together: a flight to a neighbouring country, then the land border. Citizens of Uzbekistan enter without a visa, and each person's folder held the passport, a copy of the permit, the bakery's invitation, proof of housing and Sherzod's phone number. More about this route is on the visa-free entry page.

At the border Ravshan was asked where he was going and why. He answered with a Ukrainian word he had learned back in Tashkent, pekar, baker, and named the bakery. The same word was printed on the permit copy in his hands. The whole group arrived the same day, and Sherzod met them and took them to the flats the bakery had rented near its gates.

1. Week 1

   Request, technologist's task, phone interviews, bakery documents.

2. Week 2

   Three paid trial days in Tashkent, scoring sheet, selection and reserve.

3. Week 3

   Passport translations, information sheets, baker position in every document, applications for 10 permits.

4. Week 4

   Permits issued, tickets for the group.

5. Week 7

   Visa-free entry, moving in, employment contracts and handover to the bakery.

6. Weeks 8-9

   Residence permit filings, registration of residence, contract copies.

09 / Handover

The same hands, this time without a screen

The next morning the bakery signed employment contracts with the ten bakers, and we filed the copies within the 10-day deadline. Tax numbers were arranged in the first week, and filings for temporary residence permits and registration of residence went through in the first two weeks in two groups of five. We had checked the flat documents in advance: the owner consented to registration, and the lease covered the term of the contracts.

Valentyna Mykolaivna came out to the gates to meet the group. She recognised Ravshan before Akmal had a chance to introduce him: five weeks earlier she had spent hours watching his hands from above. From there on it was the bakery's own work, and our part ended. We continue to handle the group's documents as part of migration support, and the bakery's obligations as an employer are described on the employer duties page.

The reserve of three stayed in Tashkent with their trial scores and Sherzod's contact details. The WORKIN replacement guarantee runs for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are met: finding a replacement is not charged again, while state fees, the migration partner's services, travel and living costs for the new worker are paid by the company. If a replacement is ever needed, the bakery will get someone the technologist has already seen at work.

Trial

3 paid trial days in Tashkent, 17 candidates

Criteria

6 points, mandatory threshold for dividing and shaping

Selection

10 bakers and 3 in reserve

Position

Baker in the staffing schedule, contract, permit and sheet

Permits

10 issued within seven working days

We show a company a craftsman's skill before it spends anything on permits: its own technologist sets the task, the candidate is paid for his working day, and the decision is made on scores rather than on the impression from a conversation. How a practical test in a training centre works for another trade is covered in the scenario about welders tested before the permit, a remote test from a drawing in the scenario about CNC operators, and a video test for seamstresses in the scenario about a sewing factory. The whole path from request to shift is on the How it works page. More on the pages about recruitment, workers for agriculture and food production, production workers from abroad and workers from Uzbekistan.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers