Mark Kennedy: Engineering needs to shout about its benefits as a career

NEW statistics from job search engine Adzuna reveal that engineers are the most in-demand workers in the UK, with 78,467 engineering roles advertised on the site in the last month.

According to recent figures from the Royal Academy of Engineering, there is a shortfall of 1.8 million engineers across the UK, and James Dyson has stated the UK is heading for ‘economic suicide’ if we don’t increase the take up of engineering jobs.

So where are all our engineers?

And what on earth do we do to get people interested in engineering again?

At UTC Leeds, our purpose is to educate and train the engineers of the future and we’re all gearing up to do exactly that when the school opens in September.

It’s great news for pupils and employers in the Leeds City Region but we can only do so much on own.

Engineering has an image problem among many young people – and we need to fix it fast.

When we discuss skills shortages in engineering and manufacturing, we often focus on the demand side from the employers.

Any supply side discussions are often centred on what the education system, apprenticeships and training can do to close the skills gap.

But there’s another critical aspect affecting the supply side though, and that’s desirability.

Engineering needs a PR push. It needs to become a career option that gets our young people fired up and excited.

In short, engineering needs to be sexier.

Long gone are the days of dirty factories and grease and grime. Modern engineering is a very different prospect that spans a huge range of industries.

Today’s engineers are more likely to spend their time problem solving and understanding the maths than getting their hands dirty on the factory

floor.

What can we do to encourage some of those would-be marketers, digital whizzes and finance professionals to add engineering to their ‘potential’ careers’ list?

Perhaps the biggest thing that needs to change is that we need to make engineering more accessible and interesting to girls. Women still comprise only nine per cent of the engineering profession in the UK, which is the lowest rate in Europe.

We’ve effectively got half our team on the bench at the moment. Women offer a huge untapped resource that could make a colossal impact on the engineering industry, and the economy as a whole.

Organisations like Leeds-headquartered WISE are doing great work in engaging with girls and young women and inspiring them to study STEM and follow related career paths.

The team at WISE promote female role models to challenge preconceptions, foster better links between education, employees and individuals and advise businesses on how to create better working environments for women.

Across the Atlantic in San Francisco, entrepreneur and mechanical engineer Debra Sterling is challenging stereotypes and promoting the creativity involved with engineering through her girls’ engineering toy range GoldieBlox.

Debra identified that young girls become engaged in engineering in a totally different way to boys; they tend to like the creativity aspects associated with it.

Through research, she established that once a character and story were linked to engineering activity, girls became much more interested.

Using the character GoldieBlox and the associated engineering toys, young girls are getting interested in building.

Innovative projects like this can help girls appreciate that engineering holds a future for them from a very early age.

As well as targeting very young girls, we also need to understand the minds of teenage girls and how they make their decisions regarding GCSEs and A-levels, which ultimately impact their career choices.

Girls need to feel that STEM is for them, and as teachers we have a huge responsibility here. How conscious are we of referencing female scientists and engineers in the classroom?

Do we try to find the girls who are interested in STEM and make sure they often work together?

If a teenage girl feels she’s the only one with a passion for STEM, the temptation to join her friends in different subject could sway her and ultimately take her away from a career she might excel in.

Moving on to both boys and girls, we have to start shouting louder about the benefits of engineering as a career.

Engineering is such a broad discipline that the opportunities are limitless. When you start talking to young people about possibly designing the next smartphone, or creating a faster Formula One car, their eyes light up and engineering suddenly becomes a much more exciting prospect.

We have to stop talking about non-specific engineering and start talking about the amazing practical applications of engineering that our kids could be involved in.

Teachers, careers advisors, businesses and parents – we all need to work together much more closely to explain to young people the appeal of a career in engineering.

It’s about problem-solving, creativity, innovating, building a better world and changing people’s lives. A career that offers all that, and is well paid and stable, is hard to come by.

We will be failing our children, and the industry, if we don’t start explaining more convincingly what a career in modern engineering offers.

Mark Kennedy is the Principal of UTC Leeds. The University Technical College is due to open in September.