1st – 6th March 2021, is National Careers Week so with this in mind, here at Scantec, we wanted to support by discussing and promoting the potential career routes and possibilities within the sectors we work across.
At Scantec we specialise in supplying temporary and permanent staff to a variety of technical and specialist markets including Food Manufacturing, Engineering, Project Controls, Scientific, Trades, & Infrastructure throughout the UK and Overseas. We work across industries such as Nuclear, Defence, Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Power Generation, Shipbuilding, Pharmaceutical, Water, Process & Manufacturing and other General Engineering industries.
Many of these areas are growth industries with huge potential and play an important part in the UK economy. They are industries where we are seeing improvements in automation and technology, increased investment in R&D, but equally they are industries that are skills short.
With youth unemployment remaining high and employers citing that young people are ill prepared with the basic skills needed for employment, there has never been a bigger need for careers guidance to be promoted and celebrated in education.
With this in mind, back in 2019, we did some market research into how we could support our local young people into the world of work and have since been building relationships with local companies such as The Careers & Enterprise Company, Wirral Youth Chamber, the Growth Platform, All About Stem and local schools in our area to pass on our knowledge to our local community and get people talking about careers.
The aim of this project has been to prepare children and students for the world of work and make them aware of the different career choices they have as well as how to go about pursuing these careers and the skills they will need in order to be in a stronger position when it comes to entering the jobs market.
As we have an abundance of knowledge about a wide variety of career options which we want to share in our local community. Some ways we have been doing this are below:
- Last year we became an enterprise advisor for St Marys Catholic college – working strategically with the senior management team at the school on the full spectrum of their careers program from ages 11 – 19, providing advice and ideas about things they can try, companies they can link up with. Being involved at this level meant we were able to support up to 1850 students.
- Working with Woodchurch high school we have been providing breakfast talks on specific careers with Scantec consultants presenting on different careers routes they could take into these careers across their specialist areas. We specifically talked about Careers in engineering, project controls, Trades, Scientific & IT and reached 67 students.
- We also hosted an ‘inspiration station’ at the Wirral skills show 2020 which attracted 1300 young people from age 7 to 19 –playing “skills pong” to encourage conversations around school subjects and things the young people enjoyed and which careers they could apply this to – we provided leaflets on a number of careers that may fall under certain subjects and were to go to find out more. This was really successful and allowed us to share knowledge in a fun and engaging way but also providing something tangible to takeaway and research more about.
So far we have reached 3,217 young people in just 18 months!
With a global pandemic changing the way we all live, learn and work this year we will be continuing to support local schools virtually by holding mock video interviews, giving CV advice and tips & talking about specific jobs and career paths to keep our young people exploring a variety of career choices and pathways.
In support of National Careers Week, we will also be sharing our expertise by putting the spotlight on a few of our specialist business areas over the course of this week in order to highlight the career options young people have in some thriving industry sectors and where there is a real demand for skills.
Keep an eye on our daily blogs and social media channels over the course of the week to read about some of the career options and possibilities within the technical and engineering sectors we work across.
We are also keen to keep inspiring the workforce of the future and link employers and young people so please get in touch with Steph on 0151 666 8914 or stephw@Scantec.co.uk if you would like to discuss how we can work collaboratively with you.
#careers #employability #enterprise #stem
