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European carmakers consistently top employer rankings

European carmakers consistently top employer rankings

According to Oliver Viel, a Director at Trendence, the German manufacturer BMW consistently tops employer rankings because “they have a phenomenal brand and because of that they are really spoiled when it comes to recruitment.”

The Trendence findings are backed up by a recent survey conducted for the German weekly business magazine Wirtschaftswoche. The survey, conducted by the Universum Communications consultancy between November 2006 and March 2007 identifies BMW as the favourite target for German engineering students’, with 11.6 per cent of respondents rating it as their dream employer, closely followed by Porsche with 10.7 per cent.

The findings also reflect general trends in other European countries. In 2005, for example, a study conducted by TNS-Sofres found that Renault and PSA-Peugeot Citroën were the top two favourite employers of French engineering graduates.

Meanwhile, German daily Stuttgarter Nachrichten reports that DaimlerChrysler and Porsche are seeking to recruit a grand total of 800 engineers and economists in 2007, double what was initially anticipated. In a statement published in May, Daimler also announced that it intends to boost the proportion of female engineering recruits as part of its global Diversity Management policy.

Despite the car companies’ obvious appeal to graduates, the auto industry is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit people with the right skills profile these days. The German Engineers Association (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, VDI) estimates that in 2006 alone, 50,000 engineering jobs were left empty at a cost of around €3.5bn to the German economy.

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