In 2023, the French firm plans to hire 4,000 new employees across all of its divisions, including defense, aeronautics, space, and cybersecurity. France accounts for about half of all anticipated recruitments.
"It's been a record year," says Clément de Villepin, the group's human resources director. Thales intends to hire more than 12,000 people worldwide by 2023, including 4,000 new jobs. Hirings are broken down throughout all divisions of the firm, including aeronautics, which was impacted by the Covid-19 health problem.
"Our activities - defense and security, aeronautics and space, identity and digital security, including cybersecurity - are all growing, which explains our significant recruitment needs, in particular young talents", underlined for his part the CEO of Thales, Patrice Caine, in an interview with the "Journal du Dimanche". France, the tricolor group's major establishment nation, accounts for approximately half of the targeted recruitments (5,500), which will be scattered across the region.
The recruitment movement is similar in the major areas where Thales is present: 3,350 in the rest of Europe (including 1,050 in the United Kingdom), 730 in Asia, primarily in Singapore, 730 in North America, more than 600 in Australia, and 550 in India, where the group has an aeronautics design office and engineering activities dedicated to digital security. "This economic momentum has been there for some years. "We have hired at least 5,000 workers every year since 2015," Clément de Villepin remarks.
In 2022, 11,500 new workers were employed, with 32% of them being women, increasing the total workforce to 77,000, not considering the 4,500 jobs lost when its Land Transport division was sold. Throughout the epidemic, the group did not lay off anyone, instead shifting staff in the aeronautics industry to other businesses.
More than 40% of projected jobs are for R&D activities in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, algorithms, systems engineering, and so on. This equates to 5,500 persons, with 2,200 of them residing in France. It is "the lifeblood of what makes the development of Thales", according to the head of human resources. Support functions account for 40% of all new hires, with the remaining 20% devoted to industrial production and logistics.
Thales is not the only company in the business that is aggressively recruiting. Gifas, the French aviation and space industries association, forecasts that 400 firms in the industry would recruit more than 15,000 people in France this year. Airbus anticipates 3,500 job creations in France, with half of the 13,000 planned globally. Safran is examining 4,500 of the 12,000 available positions worldwide.
The competition for expertise will be severe, especially in emerging technologies and in France, which is also planning a massive nuclear recovery effort that would necessitate the employment of many engineers. Gifas has launched a huge promotion effort for its vocations. "There are much more available employment than fresh graduates leaving school," according to Clément de Villepin.But if Thales says it faces recruitment difficulties, it has so far managed to achieve its objectives.