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When asked how it feels to be one of New Zealand’s hottest working men, Papamoa lifeguard Jordan Hills laughs and says it’s no big deal.

The 19-year-old former Mount Maunganui College student is the winner of this year’s The Edge FM’s Men at Work calendar competition and will hereon be known as Mr March.

“Yeah everyone is calling me Mr March at work now, and all of my friends introduce me as Mr March.”

The famous photo that will now grace the walls of many teenage girls’ rooms, and even take place in the Hills’ family home, when March 2012 rolls around, was taken as a “bit of a joke” while Jordan was working as a lifeguard at a friend’s family wedding.

“I was working at the wedding and my friend thought it would be funny to get a few pictures – we took a few and they entered two of them.”

Sent in by a friend, Jordan was unaware he was even entered in the competition until his friend got a call from the Edge telling her that Jordan had made the finals.

The top 12 finalists were then posted online for public voting, which closed last week.

Jordan says he didn’t know he had won the competition until he heard it on the radio on Friday, January 20 and went online to check.

“I went to the website and saw my picture up there. It’s pretty cool I didn’t think I would win overall though.”

A second year Sport and Recreation student at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, Jordan spends his summer months dividing his time between a job at Hell Pizza in Papamoa and his role as a surf lifeguard for the Papamoa Surf Club.

Jordan enjoys being a lifeguard and says it is always a challenging job. “It can be tough, you always have to make sure you keep your eyes on the flags and in the water, you have to be watching the beach the whole time to make sure people are alright.”

One of Jordan’s biggest challenges came when he was a 16-year-old working at the end of Papamoa Beach.

“A lady became caught in a rip, and another guy had gone out to help her and got caught himself. I paddled out and we managed to do a double clip tow back into shore and she ended up being okay.

“It was pretty scary, we were only 16, you really are just working on adrenalin.”

Jordan will be putting the $500 cash prize he received for winning the competition towards a trip to Australia for the Surf Life Saving Championships in March this year.