This year, b&m have attend lots of school and university engagement events, speaking to students and discussing employment & careers opportunities in construction. With a well known skills shortage, its vital for us to be sharing information on routes into the industry, spreading the word about the 186 roles and careers available.
Students have suffered with the lack of events through the Covid era, not being able to get face-to-face discussions with local employers about options for their future. We attempted to help with this by preparing a Virtual Work Experience Platform, hosted by EBP Kent, that enabled all industries to share what their world is like (see that video here). We were delighted to hear that over 25,000 students accessed the platform, showing that there was still a desire for engagement.
As soon as we could, we started getting back to schools and since then we’ve attended careers fairs at Herne Bay High, Barton Court Grammar, Folkestone Academy, St Anselms School, Canterbury College and more. We’ve shared not only routes into Surveying, but routes into construction in general, including apprenticeships.
We’ve also taken part in other career led events including hosting mock interviews with students, career networking, virtual information sessions and career employability lectures with university students.
Most recently, three of the team attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School and held a ‘Make It Work’ session. This required the team to host a full day event to students interested in construction and provide an interactive challenge relevant to our field of work. The challenge had to give the students a taster of real scenarios and problems faced every day. The team set the students a challenge to respond to design a high end residential dwelling to a client’s brief and budget. Each of the students has a role in the design team and had to undertaken their duties. 95% of the students at the event rated the day as positive or exceptional, which was great to hear and the team really enjoyed delivering the event.
We’re already looking forward to the next academic year, with talks at East Kent College in the works and further engagement with University of Kent students. We’ve also developed a ‘Get Into Construction’ page on this site which seeks to offer curious students a glance into how they can get into the industry, specifically surveying. Thanks to all the educational establishments that have had us and we’re excited to continue to spread the message about careers in construction.
