Working together to inspire youngsters to make an informed decision about their career pathway
National Careers Week, which took place last week, is a celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education across the UK. The aim is to provide a focus for careers guidance activity at an important stage in the academic calendar to help support young people leaving education.
Upon asking my peers “Was the careers advice and guidance you received as a youngster valuable to you in making an informed decision about your career pathway?” the answer was frequently no!
I can’t help but think how lucky youngsters are today, in that they are given so many more opportunities to discover more about the world of work and the different avenues available to them. The work we do through the Automotive 30% Club is a prime example of this.
Since the club was launched in 2016, with the aim of having at least 30% of women in key leadership positions by 2030, reaching out to youngsters to inspire and inform them of the many opportunities available to them across our sector has been a key part of our ‘30 by 30’ strategy.
Later in the year, we will be holding our annual Inspiring Automotive Women Day event, which this year is kindly sponsored by Volvo Car UK and will be held at their Training and Development Centre in Daventry. The purpose of the day is to connect female school pupils to female employees from within our member companies with the aim of our volunteers inspiring the pupils to consider careers within the Automotive sector through a range of interactive activities.
New for last year and to be repeated again in 2020, we will be facilitating 30 school visits. Our Inspiring Automotive Women volunteers will be matched to a school local to them and will tell their personal career story and run an interactive activity with the aim of the pupils gaining a greater understanding of the wide variety of jobs available within the sector and hopefully inspiring them to consider a career within our sector.
In addition to our IAW Day activities, we recently launched our Outreach Network which is kindly sponsored by CDK Global. Our team are busy connecting business executives from within our member companies to schools local to them, to speak with both male and female pupils with the aim of addressing the gender imbalance in the automotive and related technology sectors by informing young people and inspiring them to consider a career therein.
Connecting youngsters to people from the world of work through initiatives such as those run by the Automotive 30% Club, exposes them to careers and industries they may have not been aware of or even considered, and ultimately allows them to make an informed decision about their career pathway.
Article by Victoria Trudgill, Campaign Manager, Automotive 30% Club