Open Reach to create 220 Scottish jobs
BT Open Reach has today announced it will take on 48 trainee engineers within the Glasgow city area.
The announcement comes as part of a huge recruitment drive, which will see 220 posts created throughout Scotland.
The company is currently building or upgrading 12 UK training centres and is due to unveil an investment of £450,000 in its Scottish training centre based in Livingston, later this year.
The Scottish Government Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills, Jamie Hepburn, said: “The Scottish Government welcomes this long term investment in the Scottish workforce, which includes a capital investment being undertaken at its Livingston training facility.”
The national broadband company will see 3,000 jobs created up and down UK, including 38 in Edinburgh and the Lothians, 34 in Aberdeenshire as well as new vacancies in the Highlands and Islands, Dumfries and Galloway, Stirling, Ayrshire and Perth and Kinross.
Successful candidates will be trained to maintain and install services over Openreach’s vast network.
Fibre to the premises (FTTP) or ‘full fibre’ broadband connections can deliver download speeds of up to 1Gigabit per second, meaning downloading a typical HD film would take less time than it takes to make a cup of tea.
Fraser Rowberry, Openreach’s service director for Scotland, said:“We’re investing heavily in up skilling our people, so they can now do more for customers in a single visit, and we recently launched new career pathways to give our engineers a clear sense of the skills, accountabilities and experience they need to get where they want to be.
“We want people from all walks of life to apply for roles at Openreach, to build a diverse workforce that reflects the hugely diverse communities we serve. “
Successful applicants in Scotland will receive a Diploma for IT and Telecommunications Professionals at SCQF Level.
Speaking at the official opening of Openreach’s new training school in Peterborough, one of 12 new fibre training centres built to support the rollout, the UK Government Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Amber Rudd said: “This is a huge expansion in high skilled, well-paying jobs and yet another demonstration of the jobs success we have seen since 2010.
“Behind every employment number is a person and family whose self-esteem, mental wellbeing and economic circumstances and life chances are all vastly improved by being in the workplace.”
The company, which is a wholly owned, independently governed division of the BT Group, currently employs 24,282 field engineers and last year hired 3,500 new engineers.
Chief Executive, Clive Selley, said: “We’re making great progress towards reaching our target of upgrading three million homes and businesses to full fibre by the end of 2020 and reaching another 13k premises per week. These new recruits in Scotland will play a crucial role in that programme. Open Reach is a people business and our new apprentices will enable us to fulfill our commitments, with an ultimate ambition to deliver the best possible connectivity to everyone, everywhere, equally, across the entire country.”
