Jaguar Land Rover Gets 35,000 Applicants For 1,000 Jobs At Halewood Plant

by Derek Kreindler

Published: April 24th, 2012

jaguar land rover gets 35 000 applicants for 1 000 jobs at halewood plant

When Jaguar Land Rover announced plans to start hiring workers at their Halewood plant, the company received 6,000 applications in less than 24 hours. One month on, and Jaguar has received a further 29,000 applications.

The north of England has traditionally lagged behind the south in terms of economic prosperity, but the loss of good jobs in industries like manufacturing, shipping and mining has further enhanced hardships in the region (and also inspired some of the world’s best musicians, from The Beatles to New Order to Oasis). The JLR factory near Liverpool will expand its workforce to 4,500 employees while producing vehicles like the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover LR2 around the clock. In 2009, Halewood lost 300 jobs after Jaguar cancelled production of the X-Type, but since then, thousands of jobs have been added at the facility.

#England #Halewood #Jaguar #LandRover #Manufacturing #Production #RangeRoverEvoque #UK

Derek Kreindler

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Ronnie Schreiber on Apr 24, 2012

Tata bought JLR just after Ford had poured billions into the company, updating vehicle architecture (the all aluminum XJ weighs less than the smaller XF), giving the marque new engines and most important of all, paying for the new XF, XJ and Land Rover models that are the source of the current profits. Ford may not have made money on JLR, but they managed the acquisition well and JLR left Ford's possession in much better shape than when FoMoCo bought it.

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- Tstag on Apr 24, 2012
  
  Yes but you don't sell something that is going to shoot up in value. Ford should have sold Volvo (a brand that may go the way of SAAB) and closed Lincoln. The sale of Volvo would have generated the money Ford needed to keep the lights on at JLR during the recession and then allowed Ford to cash in big time or continue building a true premium division. Time for Mullaly to admit he lost Ford shareholder billions on this.
  
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- Robert.Walter on Apr 24, 2012
  
  @Tstag The company was within 6 months of bankruptcy as it was. Dropping the satellites in order to focus on the home planet was absolutely the right decision. If Ford hadn't acted when it did, as it did, and if the economy had broken against Ford at the wrong time, or duration-wise, Ford's current situation would be like that of GM and Chrysler; it would not have been a good bet to hold onto JLR waiting for better days.
  
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- Robert Gordon on Apr 24, 2012
  
  "the all aluminium XJ" The body structure of an XJ is made mainly from 6111,5182, 5754 alloys not aluminium per se. Calling it aluminium is like calling steel, iron.
  
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- Ronnie Schreiber on Apr 24, 2012
  
  @Robert Gordon By that standard I suppose that I shouldn't say my bike has a titanium frame because it's really an alloy of titanium, aluminum and vanadium. Or, for the matter, that my ring that was my father's isn't gold per se because it's only 14K, not 24K. If we wanted to get really pedantic, we could argue over iron as well, since most cast "iron" these days is also an alloy. Taconite anyone? For Ford's centennial they commissioned the building of six new Model Ts. The engine blocks were not exact duplicates because these days you can't get iron as impure as what was used in 1908.
  
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- Kkt on Apr 25, 2012
  
  @Tstag You sell something that's going to shoot up in value if you are going to be evicted tomorrow and absolutely have to raise some cash. Nobody would have paid any money for Lincoln and not enough for Volvo.
  
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Silverkris on Apr 24, 2012

Ford wasn't quite able to master the strategy/positioning of their "Premier Automotive Group" - it took too much attention and resources. I concur with Ronnie that they did some good things for JLR before they sold it.

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- Skor on Apr 24, 2012
  
  Ford was forced by circumstances to pawn off Jag in a last ditch effort to save the Glass House. Until that time, they were making pretty good progress with the Premier Auto Group.
  
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- Onyxtape on Apr 24, 2012
  
  My little anecdote with Jaguar during the Ford days. Back in the late 90s / early 2000s, I went to a multi-day interview in for one of Ford's executive development tracks. I was young and interviewing against MBAs and PhDs (when I only had a lowly Bachelor's, placed into an Apprentice-ish situation with some very motivated and bright people). I must have done something right as I was picked for one of the slots. Apparently, one of the interviewers was the head product management person for Jaguar (he didn't identify himself as such at the time), and I told him outright that the new Jaguars looked like Tauruses with leather. He later said he wasn't used to not having a bunch of Ford yes-men around him, and found my blunt honesty refreshing. I ended up declining the offer, which turns out to be a better decision as I probably would have gotten axed soon after during Ford's upcoming dark times.
  
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TW4 on Apr 24, 2012

This tells us that wages/compensation should be falling so unemployment can stabilize and manufacturing jobs can be preserved. Wages are not adjusting, and unlike Keynes' theory of sticky wages, workers don't appear to be demanding artificially high wages. This is the strangest economic crisis in the history of the developed world.

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Robc123 on Apr 24, 2012

Forget about the 1k jobs or the 35k people that applied- the ratio is 35 to 1. That would be killer in the US or Canada where employees routinely get 250-350 applications per opening. A 250 to 1 ratio.

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