GM is reportedly poaching workers who have been sacked by Tesla
General Motors is looking to take advantage of Tesla job cuts after the company underwent a series of high-profile layoffs over the last month.
Tesla boss Elon Musk announced in April that the EV giant would be letting go 10 per cent of the company’s global workforce of 140,000 people.
The company also cancelled summer internships, which GM is now trying to capitalise on.
Laura del Amo, a Talent Sourcing Strategist for General Motors, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company is interested in hiring software students who may have had their positions cut as part of Tesla’s upcoming summer internship cohort.
“We believe in the strength of our automotive community and are keen to integrate diverse talents into our team,” she wrote.
And she added: “If you are now looking for a new internship opportunity, let’s connect.”
Several students announced last week that Tesla had rescinded their internship offers only weeks before their positions were scheduled to start.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has enacted a series of layoffs recently, with the latest occurring this week which impacted the company’s software, services and engineering departments.
Other sectors of the company, including the electric vehicle charger team, have also suffered job cuts. At least 500 people from the charging team are thought to have lost their positions.
Last month, Musk announced that Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s head of EV charging and Daniel Ho, Tesla’s head of new vehicles program, were leaving the company.
Explaining the job cuts, Musk said it was “time to reorganize” the company, a move that he said happens every five years in a memo to employees last month. He’s announced that he plans to eliminate 10 per cent of the company’s workforce.
Newly-employed Tesla workers told The Independent that the layoffs happened chaotically, adding that some people who’d been reprimanded repeatedly stayed on at the automotive company while those with clean records lost their employment.
In a statement about the recruiting announcement, a spokesperson for General Motors said, “We’re always looking to source new talent, especially in areas like engineering, software development and electrification, and welcome applicants to our popular intern programs — GM is a great place to start a career.”
GM has a history of hiring former Tesla employees. In February the Detroit-based company hired Kurt Kelty, a former executive at Tesla, to serve as its VP of Battery.
And a month later they hired JP Clausen, the former VP of Tesla’s Austin Gigafactory.
