8000 apply for 1000 Land Rover jobs

By Steve Fowler

November 2011

Land Rover has received over 8,000 applications for 1,000 vacancies at its plant in Solihill, West Midlands, in the space of a week.

Parent company JaguarLandRover made the announcement of additional jobs and investment at Solihull a week ago, and the applications started flooding in even though the company hadn't started a formal recruitment process.

JaguarLandRover's expansion means a total of nearly 3,000 people will have been taken on over a 12 month period as both Jaguar and Land Rover begin an intensive period of growth with both brands promising a raft of new models.

336 graduates started last September, with Jaguar global brand director Adrian Hallmark telling Auto Express that a further 250 graduates are being targeted in the coming year. With 1,100 engineering graduates employed in the UK in the past year, that makes JLR the biggest single employer of graduates in the engineering sector.

It's not just JLR that's benefitting, JLR CEO Dr Ralf Speth told Auto Express that suppliers are taking on more staff, too. "A supplier who provides dashboard parts near our factory in Halewood, Merseyside, has grown from 130 to 390 people," Dr Speth told Auto Express.