Online retail titan Amazon is offering recruits for its new Darftord warehouse a £1,000 joining bonus as it looks to attracts staff amid a mounting hiring crisis.

The group is advertising for “urgently needed” warehouse pickers and packers across the UK to help meet booming online shopping demand.

A vast, four-storey warehouse is open near the Dartford tunnel on a 45-acre plot of land on the site of the decommissioned Littlebrook Power Station.

The £200 million project, opening this month, will create 1,300 new jobs. 

Adverts on the Indeed website reveal it is offering to pay up to £1,000 as a starting bonus for a raft of roles, on top of an hourly rate of as much as £11.10 an hour, rising to £22.20 an hour for overtime.

News Shopper: The decommissioned Littlebrook Power StationThe decommissioned Littlebrook Power Station

It comes as UK firms are struggling to fill roles across a range of industries, with issues caused by Brexit, coronavirus self-isolation rules and with millions still on the furlough workers’ support scheme.

The recruitment woes are causing crippling shortages of lorry drivers, while hospitality firms have also struggled to fill roles on reopening after lockdown.

Official data last month showed there were 953,000 vacancies in the three months to the end of June – with vacancies passing one million for the first time ever in July.

Applicants who are taken on between now and September 18 are eligible for the bonus.

According to the job ads, Amazon is offering “immediate starts with no experience needed” for many of the warehouse roles.

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