Jaguar Land Rover Case Study
JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) is a British automotive company that design, engineer, manufacture and sell luxury vehicles across their four distinct, global brands: Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar. Their vision is to be the proud creators of the most desirable brands, for the most discerning of clients. JLR have a proud history of pipelining diverse student talent across their apprenticeship, undergraduate and graduate programmes.
What was the client's business challenge?
One challenge that graduate-hiring businesses face is getting the right quality of applications, however, between the interventions offered by JLR and the advice and guidance available from the BCU careers service teams, we are working collaboratively to bridge this gap.
As a forward-thinking University, BCU has been able to provide the relevant skills and knowledge for students to develop and become industry ready. Bringing creative thinking to the forefront of what we do and not being afraid to do something different is what has helped to continue the great work across both the university and JLR.
Jaguar Land RoverSam Parkin, University Engagement Lead
The charter is a useful way to understand the BCU offering when it comes to activity JLR can get involved in to support our attraction efforts, providing recommendations to support our goals around pipelining quality, diverse talent into our placements and graduate schemes. Moving forward, we can use the charter as a reference point year-on-year, tracking engagement, then adjusting and developing initiatives that resonate best with our target audiences to inspire students to consider future careers within JLR.
How did the service address the client's needs?
Birmingham City University (BCU) have a long-standing collaboration with JLR, through a variety of activity such as insight days, skills sessions, guest speakers and careers events, aiming to improve the employability skills of BCU students and provide opportunities onto JLR’s placement and graduate programmes.
In 2024, the Employer Engagement team launched a brand-new Employer Charter to help support both the team and businesses with clearly defined goals and outcomes.
JLR completed an Employer Charter with Employer Engagement Consultant Nicola Kelly Cash, when this was introduced. The charter helps provide a summary of the types of engagement that are available for employers to engage in across the variety of student groups at BCU, and for JLR, gives them a long-term planning tool that aligns all planned activity in one place. This is something that supports the relationship between JLR’s early careers recruitment team, it’s campus ambassadors and BCU staff across the careers team and into faculty.
Through working with BCU and the team on recruitment, a clear stream of students from the university, into positions at JLR, has been established.
What measurable outcomes did the client experience as a result of your service?
Reflecting on their experience working with BCU and the Employer Engagement team, Heather added that the amazing relationship with Nicola and the team has helped them to work effectively. Providing connections to work with other teams and staff members from across the University and ensuring they are up to date on all upcoming events and other opportunities.
“It’s great to work with Nicola and the team to plan our engagement across BCU. The team are passionate about creating exciting future career opportunities for their students and provide an array of activity for us to get involved in, building our connections across the university and giving our campus ambassadors within JLR (BCU alumni) the chance to “give back” and network with hundreds of students each year”.
Continuing to work together in partnership to provide BCU students with the skills to succeed in the graduate job market, as well as recognising the exciting opportunities that exist within companies like JLR to work in engineering, manufacturing and corporate based roles.
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