Every engineer at Projex Solutions was once a fifteen-year-old with no idea what an engineer actually does.
That is why three of our team spent National Manufacturing Day at West Yorkshire Manufacturing Services last week, in front of around 600 students from schools across West Yorkshire.
Hayder Abbas and Finley Cahill have both recently become STEM Ambassadors, and this was exactly the kind of day they signed up for. Hayder made a point worth repeating: he has worked our stand at ChemUK, and he found this far more challenging. Delegates already know what process engineering is. A fourteen-year-old gives you no head start, about three minutes, and no polite nodding. You have to be genuinely clear.
Sharon Craven was only meant to help set up and was still there at half past one, asking hundreds of young people what they want to do when they leave school.
There is no commercial case for a day like this, and that is rather the point. This industry has a pipeline to fill and an image problem to fix, and neither gets solved by simply waiting for somebody else to turn up and make the effort.
Thank you to Sharon, Hayder and Finley for giving up a working day, and to the team at WYMS for organising it so well. We will be back next year.
Read the full blog article here: https://projexsolutions.co.uk/every-engineer-was-once-a-fifteen-year-old/