Year 10 UTC Leeds students have impressed professionals with their passion for engineering and manufacturing.
A range of professionals from the Leeds Manufacturing Alliance visited UTC Leeds on Friday 3rd May to talk to Year 10 students about the advantages of gaining work experience and possible opportunities within their own organisations.
The professionals were from a variety of organisations including manufacturing company, Saftronics Limited, recruitment business, The Works Recruitment, printing supplier, Agfa Graphics, and electronics manufacturer, Daletech Electronics.
Tracy Dawson, Managing Director of Daletech Electronics and chair of the Leeds Manufacturing Alliance, said: “What we absolutely know as manufacturers is that we need young talent within our business, and unfortunately, over the past decade that has been neglected and we’re now starting to see this talent gap as the older engineers are retiring. We’ve got no one coming in at the ground floor!”
Tracy recognises the value of young people and loves their enthusiasm, especially the young people at UTC Leeds: “Coming into UTC Leeds we know we have a captive audience as they are already interested in, and studying, engineering and manufacturing. I would take students for work experience placements from UTC Leeds above anywhere else.”
Paul Stead, Head of Sales and Marketing at Saftronics, and Jonathan Robinson, Technical Director at Saftronics, decided to come into UTC Leeds as they saw it as a fantastic opportunity for the company. Paul said: “It’s always been a passion of ours to grow young people through the business. We found this an ideal opportunity to get our name known amongst these young, talented and enthusiastic students who may be interested in a career in electrical engineering.”
Jonathan, who started his career as an apprentice and shared his experience with the students, said: “I wanted to give the students an insight into how I started and how I’ve progressed throughout my career.”
He continued: “I really enjoy working with our apprentices, I love to see their enthusiasm and how they build on their knowledge. I think it is wonderful that UTC Leeds is targeted towards engineering.”
The students were also informed about the upcoming Leeds Manufacturing Festival where they can find out more about the career opportunities within manufacturing that exist in the region. Find out more here: https://leedsmanufacturingfestival.co.uk/
Some of the students used a break in the talks as a chance to ask the professionals about how to gain work experience, whether they could have a look around the business or to find out more about the company.
This event is a fantastic example of just one of the employer engagements available to the students at UTC Leeds.
