At Omni, we know all too well the value and importance of recruitment when it comes to assisting people with their chosen career paths, and that to do so effectively this process needs to start early. Just how early was reinforced recently, following reports in the news that toys aimed specifically at girls could be to blame for their subsequent career choices.
The debate was sparked after Jenny Willott, Equalities Minister for the Liberal Democrats, told Parliament that the ‘gendering of toys’ matters, because it instructs children on how they are supposed to feel and behave. The thinking behind this particular argument is that a girl who never owned a Lego or Meccano set as a child may fail to discover that she had real potential to become an engineer.
If the choices that girls make at school – which have the tendency to veer away from science and maths subjects – are shaped at such an early age, this could ultimately prove detrimental to the UK economy in the long run, as companies continue in their well-publicised struggle to fill key roles in STEM fields.
Moving past the age at which a Barbie is the ‘right’ fun for girls, barriers to pursuing more technical pursuits are even stronger. A committee of MPs warned how women are being put off careers in science because of the pressures of family life, but also because of ‘perceptions and biases’. The Commons’ Science and Technology Committee said it was ‘astonishing’ how under-represented women were in the STEM industries.
To attract the talent it needs, it has long been common practice for the NHS to go into junior schools and talk to children about career prospects in the health sector, allowing youngsters (of both sexes) to get a very clear idea about what they want and do not want from an early age.
Recruitment specialists looking to extend their talent pool could do no better than taking a leaf out of this particular book and consider their own school outreach activities, where they place emphasis on the merits of both taking up and pursuing STEM subjects, specifically with girls in mind. There is little doubt that clever, strategic recruitment processes, paired with the proactive education of school-aged children about all of the exciting career paths available to them, will play a crucial role in helping to plug the STEM gap.
They could help the process further by either providing or highlighting a wide range of easily accessible resources, including mentoring programmes, training tools, grants and apprenticeship schemes.
It’s this approach that will ultimately help to increase the STEM talent pool, with hopefully a more equal mix of men of women at a graduate and apprentice level, so that businesses no longer have to fight over the same candidates for roles. Instead, they will be able to choose from a wealth of the best and most well-qualified new recruits, be they men or women, while the future of these industries, and the wider economy, is secured for years to come.
