“The whole automotive industry is facing a shortfall of engineers, and for Jaguar Land Rover, encouraging more girls and women to consider a career in engineering is a vital part of addressing this shortage,” said Nick Rogers, executive director, product engineering, Jaguar Land Rover. “We’ve seen our female engineering workforce grow from 9% to 11% over the past four years due to our initiatives like Young Women in the Know and our Women in Engineering undergraduate sponsorship scheme, and it’s great to see these programmes are helping us attract more female talent to our business.”
During the four-day ‘Young Women in the Know’ programme, the students will tour design and manufacturing facilities, network with female employees, spend a day on work placement with a female mentor and brush up their workability skills including CV writing and interview practice. The scheme is running at five JLR Education Business Partnership Centres in the Midlands and Merseyside,
JLR has been running the ‘Young Women in the Know’ programme at its Solihull manufacturing plant since 2012 and 42 participants have secured apprenticeships at the company. Chloe McNally, a JLR Advanced Apprentice based in Special Vehicle Operations, said: “I took part in the 'Young Women in the Know' course in 2013. I thought manufacturing plants would be dirty, noisy and not suitable for females but the reality was very different and it was great to meet so many women from across the business and hear about their careers.”
Danella Bagnall, chief product engineer at JLR, who was recently named in Autocar’s Top 100 Most Influential British Women in the Automotive Industry, said: “I started my career as an apprentice 29 years ago which was a great way of continuing education, developing skills, and getting into industry. I would thoroughly recommend a career in engineering to girls and hope this programme inspires lots more women to become engineers.”
The Young Women in the Know course will ensure the female students have strengthened their knowledge and experience ahead of the Apprenticeship assessment centres early next year.
