Online 'dating' gives old companies young blood

A matchmaking scheme is hooking graduates up with car makers. The Telegraph's Louisa Peacock reports:

More hi-tech wizardry and coding goes into the operating system of a car these days than the super advanced Eurofighter Typhoon jet, I’m reliably told. 

This is hard for me to believe. How can a vehicle used to drop the children off at school be compared, technically, with a fighting machine that goes to   war? 

Then again, I don’t own a BMW 7 Series with night-vision to detect animals on the road, or a Volvo XC60, which drives itself. 

In fact, drooling over the features in luxury vehicles for sale these days, it soon becomes clear just how advanced the industry has become. 

If you ever wanted to work on building one of these things, you would need a   degree in rocket science. 

But herein lies the problem. As Britain’s car making industry waves goodbye to the long dry spell of decline and accelerates into record monthly sales, skills haven’t caught up. 

Just as a new wave of hi-tech, exciting jobs are finally here, there are few people around to fill them. 

Success at the likes of Jaguar Land Rover, which this month said it would create 1,700 jobs at its Solihull plant, has exposed Britain’s problem of   engineering shortages. 

And if the JLRs and Nissans of this world struggle to attract enough quality applicants, spare a thought for the thousands of smaller firms in the supply   chain, whose components are the bread and butter of what makes up a car. 

What chance does a business way down the food chain have of attracting a whizz kid from a top university with know-how of new composites, alloys and   electrical installation? Zero to none. 

Take Chris Sharratt, managing director of Lodent Precision, a car toolmaking firm in the West Midlands that supplies all the major players. It’s taken his company five months to recruit just two people – they need another 10, he tells me, if they are to match upcoming orders. The lack of skills is   hampering growth. Yet change is afoot. So slow was Mr Sharratt’s recruitment   process, he’s sought help from engineering skills body Semta, funded by industry. 

Semta has just introduced a scheme that allows the overspill of good-quality applicants to the likes of JLR (of which there are thousands) to be matched   to the supply chain firms who need them. It’s online dating but for car   makers, and some 600 apprentices are already poised to work for smaller firms they wouldn’t have otherwise heard of. 

Mr Sharratt is optimistic. But his biggest barrier – as with most smaller firms – is pay. Even if he can attract recruits, has he got enough to keep them there? 

Potentially, he has more to offer than the big companies. He can provide job security and, arguably, a more interesting career. “The big car manufacturers are just 'badges’ – they assemble car parts, but they don’t make them,” he says. 

“We did all the under-vehicle work for the new Range Rover.”

If you want to build a car and get stuck in then Mr Sharratt’s your man. 

But it will take more than relying on overspill from the big players to get the staff he needs. The average age of Lodent’s 45-strong workforce is 60 – within five years the firm could be in trouble. Lodent needs an influx of fresh blood – fast. 

This is where Semta can help. Bill Twigg, director of apprenticeships, oversees the industry’s fast-track scheme. 

He’s looking for more employers to work with to help find recruits. Industry figures last week showed almost 1.4m cars were driven out of forecourts this year, a 10pc rise on 2012. Investment in the supply chain is crucial. 

Thanks to Semta, Mr Sharratt has taken on his first four tailor-made apprentices. He’s also working with the local university technical college   to take the best of the crop when they graduate. 

But the industry has to get over its image problem. Apprenticeships are still seen as the poorer sister to degrees. Thinking differently, Mr Sharratt has targeted local parents to let them know about the hi-tech jobs on offer at Lodent. If it seems drastic, it isn’t: if car manufacturers can’t find the skills here, who can blame them for looking overseas? 

Louisa is The Telegraph’s Deputy Women’s Editor you can follow her on twitter @louisapeacock