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

Derek Kreindler
by Derek Kreindler

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.

Derek Kreindler
Derek Kreindler

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  • Ronnie Schreiber 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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    • Kkt 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.

  • Silverkris 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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    • Onyxtape 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.

  • TW4 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.

  • Robc123 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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