Gigafactory appoints EV skills specialist

West Midlands Gigafactory joint venture has announced the appointment of leading EV recruitment CEO and founder Steve Doyle as the project’s skills ambassador.

He will be engaged on a consultancy basis with his main focus still being CEO of EVera Recruitment, Europe’s only dedicated Battery and EV recruiter.

Already an ambassador for STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) Learning, and PhD Careers Advisor for The Faraday Institution, he has over 25 years of experience in recruitment and education and will take on leading the skills and recruitment strategy for the joint venture.

The UK has unrivalled access to academic powerhouses and skills, and the gigafactory site in Coventry is situated in the epicentre of the UK’s automotive industry where more than 800,000 people are employed in relevant sectors such as EV and battery and chemical engineering.

He said: “The world is being electrified and our workforce needs to be. In an industry facing skills shortages, we need to implement new recruitment models that can overcome this and succeed. The skill sets within the gigafactory space are often transferable from the automotive, pharmaceutical or food industries.”

Mike Murray, West Midlands Gigafactory project director, said: “Based in the heart of the UK’s manufacturing sector – West Midlands Gigafactory is placed in the Skills Capital of the UK with unrivalled access to current and future automotive talent. The site will create up to 6,000 new highly skilled jobs directly and thousands more in the supply chain, with the potential for 60 GWh per annum.

“It is vital at this stage of our project to assign a leading industry skills ambassador to support the success of our recruitment process in a market facing a skills shortage. We are thrilled to have Steve’s guidance and wealth of knowledge to educate the next phase of the project as we look to secure what is most important – the people.”