Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) recently said in an interview with the Berliner daily mirror, he watched the Tagesschau and didn’t hear any good news for 15 minutes. “Not one?” was the query. “Even the weather forecast was bad!” replied Weil, which aptly describes the current mood of many people in the country: With the exception of crises, the feeling is that there is a lack of almost everything. For example, in workers.
The so-called VAG Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft Nuremberg is no exception: the local transport company is now looking for “tram drivers (m/f/d)”. And apparently so desperately that it tailored its job advertisement to a rather unusual target group. Beate Haberler, who is responsible for driving services at VAG, explains that we have to take “new approaches in our recruiting” if we want to keep the local transport offering in Nuremberg at the current level and expand it even further. And these new paths lead – drumroll – to the region’s universities.
We are looking for students who want to be trained as tram drivers in a kind of crash course, although it is perhaps better not to use the word crash in this context. In any case, the plan is: from the lecture hall to the rail in 30 days. From Beate Haberler’s point of view, this is all a “real win-win situation”: Young people could acquire an “additional qualification” by driving trams as working students in the evenings after lectures and on weekends (they receive corresponding surcharges for such services) and in this way at the same time relieve the burden on employed tram drivers.
Of course, future tram drivers must meet some basic requirements: they should be at least 21 years old and have a valid class B driver’s license, and they should also be “reliable, suitable for driving duties and shifts”. In return, after the paid training, they receive an hourly wage of 15.66 euros and, in addition to a lot more, discounts in the VAG canteens. Interested parties can apply until the end of December. The competition should not be underestimated: eight applications for nine positions were received within one day. But the good news is: There is no numerus clausus.