Volvo Plans to Expand Capacity, Hire 1,200 in Europe

Volvo Corp. recently announced that they plan to hire around 1,200 new employees as well as expand their capacity at their European factories baking on the strong worldwide demand. Most of the employees, they plan on hiring are product development engineers.

The CEO for Volvo, Stefan Jacoby, said that the car manufacturer expects to sell a significant number of cars this year in comparison to last year following a downturn which affected car manufacturers badly.

Early in the year, Jacoby had said that Volvo would be switching from defensive to offensive mode. This is part of the manufacturer’s aim for boosting worldwide volume from 800,000 vehicles per year by the year 2020, if not sooner from the 373,525 vehicles produced in the year 2010.

The company will need to recruit 1,000 new employees in Sweden of which 900 will be engineers, as well as add 200 more employees to their Ghent plant in Belgium. Most of these engineers will work in the Sweden plant joining the R&D Volvo team. They will help to build the competence of the automaker in the electrification field.

The human resources head of Volvo, Bjorn Sallstrom, said that this was one of the company’s biggest recruitment projects in its history. The engineers are required for developing car models and technology as part of the aggressive product plan that their executive management and board has developed.

Jacoby further added that they are investing in the future of their company. This would mean that would be required to work harder to remain cost effective.