(edit title) Romanian vs Swedish name Guy trying to join the employment club Options

[Yorkshireman]

Like i said, there are so many immigrants who have good education that are leaving Sweden in droves and are welcomed with open arms in other western societies, they are landin ... (show full quote)

Like i said, there are so many immigrants who have good education that are leaving Sweden in droves and are welcomed with open arms in other western societies, they are landing top jobs, that will be a huge problem in a few years time, driving away highly educated people and replcaing them with incompetent people, all because of a ''name' or nationality background, very 1960s!!! ... (hide full quote)

Well according to the latest article in Chef, the management publication. The ideal dream employee is someone between the age of 41-50 ...they have reasonable work experience, and their baby-time behind them.

http://chef.se/drommedarbetaren-ar-aldre-an-du-tror/

[djmarko]

very scary!!! things will improve sooner enough, you cant sustain a society like this forever!!

[Gamla Hälsingebock]

A while ago...in the USA baseball world...the problem of being the first team to hire a...*minority*...was how to eventually fire him/her without being branded a racist.

Thoughts like this still exist...why take a chance?...Hire what you know...your own people will do nicely.

Swedes need jobs too!

[oddsock]

Look at Volvo and SAAB. They totally failed to understand the international market. They thought everyone in the world would want to be driving massive station wagons like everyone in the Swedish countryside does. They continued to build cars in the Swedish style and meanwhile the world moved on to smaller, more economical cars. Now SAAB is bust and Volvo cars came very close to the brink. This is a case of insular thinking and insular hiring practices destroying Swedish industry.

[Yorkshireman]

Rubbish!

Between 2000 until 2010, SAAB was totally owned by GM, all models launched during that period were under the direction of GM, in fact they made them base the models upon existing GM owned models/platforms. Each one launched was a utter commercial failure. I would rather tend to see it as the poor SAAB engineers and designers trying to make something good from piles of pooh. It was out of their control.

As for Volvo Cars ...if insular thinking and insular hiring practices result in a Profit of 1.6 Billion SEK (2011) then I rather suspect their shareholders would say ...continue being insular please

[oddsock]

Hmmm, Saab was losing money hand over fist before GM came in. GM introduced cost-cutting measures but SAAB engineers basically ignored them and continued to produce over-engineered tank cars that couldn't turn a profit. Today they are bankrupt. The SAAB business model was unsustainable.

Volvo, as we know, has been saved by the Chinese.

[Yorkshireman]

They totally failed to understand the international market. They thought everyone in the world would want to be driving massive station wagons like everyone in the Swedish countryside does.

I still can't quite see where Volvo and SAAB failed to understand the international market and created massive station wagons ... SAAB was under GM ownership, that directed what models to produce ...and Volvo was under Ford ownership that also gave specific direction on what models to produce, eg. S80, XC60 and more in order to push it even more upmarket. Ford only sold Volvo because in 2007/8 they were in financial crisis themselves, on the verge of bankruptcy. I just don't see where the comment about Swedish insular thinking and insular hiring policy comes into teh picture with those 2 companies, when they were under direct ownership and direction of non-Swedish companies!

Now I can see that if people want cheaper cars with lots of features and functions, then I certainly wouldn't make them in Sweden, because it is not economic to do so, labour is too expensive, other overheads are expensive (electricity etc..), raw materials are more expensive to deliver here, and additional transport costs to get a reasonable volume of vehicles out into Europe and beyond to the bigger markets.

[oddsock]

Saab was making serious losses before GM took over, you can hardly blame GM. The reason SAAB starting going downhill in the 80s and 90s (and thus needed GM to take them over) was because SAAB was a.) too small to take advantage of economy of scale and b.) was producing big cars at a time when the Civic and Micra were taking over the market. The French and German automakers were able to weather this storm from Japan because they had the Polo, Golf, Clio and the 205, but SAAB had nothing in that sector. Meanwhile they were getting squeezed out of the big car semi-luxury segment by the VAG Group.

I read a very interesting article on SAAB a couple of years ago, about how GM tried to let SAAB take advantage of economies of scale by using GM platforms and parts at a discount, but the Swedish engineers kept modifying and over-engineering the GM platforms and parts too much, which meant that the SAAB parts had to be made to order and cold no longer take advantage of economies of scale - meaning that their cars could no longer turn a profit. It was almost as though the SAAB engineers were so stubborn that they would rather go bankrupt than make a profit. I can't find that article but it was very interesting reading though.

Volvo was smarter in that they took good advantage of Ford parts and Ford platforms and were able to use economies of scale to produce much cheaper Volvos. Volvo embraced their foreign owners and that saved them in the end.

I did finr this though, an interesting take on the broken business model of SAAB:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen...aab-had-to-die/