15,000 apply for just ten jobs at city manufacturer

AN engineering firm has been “overwhelmed” with 15,000 applications for just ten jobs on a new Birmingham assembly line.

Lontra is opening the new line in Tyseley later this year, assembling industrial machines from components manufactured across the UK.

Steve Smith-Howes, of recruitment agency Glue Resourcing, said: “This is an unprecedented volume of applications for a job posting even accounting for the recession triggered by Covid-19.

“Although roles with fast-growth manufacturing firms such as Lontra are seen as highly attractive, reflecting the world class skills and ambitions of the local workforce, I’ve never known anything like it in 30 years of recruitment.”

Steve Lindsey, Lontra’s chief executive, said: “A buoyant software sector is of real value to the UK, but it will be outliers such as ourselves that transform the UK’s manufacturing and construction sectors.

“Manufacturing and exports create a strong bedrock for an economy, delivering productive and rewarding jobs that people are proud of. It is these jobs that we should be investing in as a country.” The jobs scramble emerged as a study suggested job vacancies in Birmingham had collapsed by more than two-thirds in a matter of months because of the pandemic.

Jobs site CV-Library said there was a fall of 68 per cent in the city in the three months to June compared to the same quarter last year.

The Midlands has suffered a string of losses at big-name employers like John Lewis and DHL Sectors which saw the biggest fall in job adverts included administration, design, sales, recruitment, catering, media, and marketing, research indicated. Yardley and Hodge Hill saw the highest proportion of workers furloughed in Birmingham, at 37 per cent.