France: RATP harnesses apprenticeships in bus driver recruitment push

Amid major difficulties in recruiting bus drivers, the RATP, the state-owned operator of the Paris public transport system, is leveraging co-option and increasing the level of recruitment via apprenticeships. Furthermore, to broaden its pool of candidates, the operator has also decided to lower the age at which people can join its career development path, from 21 at present to 18. This year, out of the 1,500 bus driver positions open for the Ile-de-France network, 800 are yet to be filled.
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At the end of August, only 700 bus driver jobs on the RATP network had been filled out of the 1,500 planned for the year. The operator therefore only has four months to hire the 800 new recruits expected on the Ile-de-France network by 31 December 2022. To this end, the group, which has 65,000 employees in total (35% of whom are women and 10% of whom are bus drivers), launched a call for applications on 14 September. “The recruitment difficulties that we are encountering are unprecedented,”...

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