Des Thurlby, HR director of auto maker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), said the organisation must practice the same process and consistency-based values in its recruitment process as its workers do on a production line.

A July announcement of new jobs at JLR took the organisation’s new job count in the past two years to 8,000. At the end of the current campaign, in which recruitment is directed through the JLR website, the company will employ around 24,000 people in the UK.

“Basically we practice lean manufacturing in the manufacturing business, and we practice the same sort of lean processes and consistency in HR,” Thurlby told Recruiter.

This means that all local line managers go through the same training and interviewing and assessment preparation, with a nine-month training programme post-hire standard across all plants of the company.

While the company makes different types of cars in different plants, “essentially the roles are transferrable irrespective of what kind of vehicle you are building”, Thurlby added.

Within 72 hours of opening up 1,100 roles at Castle Bromwich near Birmingham at the end of July, the company had received thousands of applications.

For previous recruitment drives at its Halewood (1,000 jobs) and Solihull (1,000) sites, the company was “overwhelmed” by the number of applicants, eventually totalling about 30,000 each. Thurlby said the company was “very fortunate in having lots of fantastic candidates and certainly lots of people who weren’t successful were above the line”.