After a major recruiting drive in May this year, BT’s Openreach, responsible for the building and maintenance of BT’s networks, has announced that it has openings for 500 engineers.
The announcement was made after receiving pressure from watchdog Ofcom to repair its lines and strengthen its infrastructure as quickly as possible. There are also general concerns that recruiting so many staff will affect the future infrastructure projects announced by the company.
With this announcement, the number of staff recruited by Openreach has risen to 2,400 this year. Openreach is one of the biggest employers of Britain with more than 30,000 staff and the company announced a major recruitment phase in May this year for 1,600 vacancies.
Openreach Chief Executive Joe Garner said that the recruitment drive will help the company to hire engineers who will take care of the company’s plans to roll out fibre optic broadband in rural areas and also fix the broken lines to better demonstrate the company’s commitment to its service.
There are also expectations that its projects like HS2 and London super sewer will open more opportunities for contractors in the near future.
The roles are mostly for London, Aberdeen and Surrey and a majority of them are permanent while some of them are 18 month fixed term contracts. It is also said that 200 positions are already filled by ex-servicemen as the company has previously committed to employing personnel from armed forces whenever it’s possible.
The company also said that it has received applications from many women also and women seem to be more interested in engineering jobs, of late.
Garner, soon after taking charge, begun focusing on customer service and aims to improve it during his tenure in the company. The news of recruitment has come following EE’s announcement to fire almost 350 members of its staff as part of its change in corporate strategies.
