Ex-armed forces personnel are the principal talent pool telecoms giant BT is using to fill 400 new engineering roles for broadband project Openreach.

A spokesperson for the firm tells Recruiter that it “would want to fill all of them with ex-military personnel” if possible. The company is working with the post-military resettlement scheme, the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), operated by the Ministry of Defence and talent solutions firm Right Management.

This brings the number of new engineers hired by BT this year to over 1,000, many of whom have forces backgrounds, as Openreach looks to expand its footprint to a point where it serves two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

New hires will join the business’s mobile workforce and must be prepared to work across the country rather than being confined to one location.

Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for culture, media, Olympics and sport, says: “Digital technology is fundamental to the way we live and do business, which is why we want the UK to have the best and fastest broadband in Europe by 2015.”

Openreach says it is also retraining and re-skilling hundreds of existing staff to become broadband engineers in the future. Around 3,000 BT engineers are currently devoted to the project.