Berkeley County Volvo job post causes site to crash

MONCKS CORNER, SC (WCSC) - The ground has been broken and the wheels are motion to open a Volvo plant in Berkeley County.

But after new job positions were posted for the factory Tuesday, things took a sudden halt.

"Before I put the post up on Facebook, I turned to our intern and said, 'I have a feeling this is going to be good,'" Berkeley County PIO Michael Mule said. "And, we noticed the number of shares, the number of likes, the number of comments within a 10 minute period and we said oh man, we might be in trouble with this post."

The job resource site berkeleymeansbusiness.com typically draws in hundreds daily.

Mule said, put the world "Volvo" in a post and things quickly change.

"Like Kim Kardashian does sometimes, we broke the Internet," Mule said.

The server couldn't handle the unexpected traffic, thousands more than typical, and it crashed.

Within an hour, it was up and running again.

The site features jobs across Berkeley County.

A total of 55 jobs were posted when it crashed Tuesday.

Most of the positions posted featured Volvo jobs for management and top level positions.

The Swedish automotive manufacturer will invest $500 million in building a factory in Berkeley County.

The plant, which will produce the latest generation of Volvo models, will have a capacity to initially build up to 100,000 cars per year.

The new factory is expected to create up to 2,000 jobs within the next decade and 4,000 jobs by 2030.

The first cars are expected to roll out in 2018.

Many who live in Berkeley County are excited about the future.

"The growth here is awesome," Paulette Haynes said. "I enjoy the people. They're loving. They're friendly and I wouldn't want to live any other place."

"I think it's awesome," Deborah Truitt said. "I'm not from here, but this is the most wonderful place I've ever lived and I've lived all over the United States."

According to the latest data from the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce, the unemployment rate in Berkeley county has d ropped from 6.3% to 4.8% since January of 2015.

With the Volvo plant in the works, more job opportunities are headed to Berkeley County.

Mule calls it a good problem to have.

"I'm sure next time we say we're going to have Volvo jobs up, we're going to make sure that the bandwidth is there to handle all the traffic," Mule said.

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