Building Our Skills To Launch Bespoke Fenestration Industry Careers Fairs

Building Our Skills – Making Fenestration, Glass and Glazing a Career of Choice has commenced consultation with its Advisory Panel and a wider group of supporters to discuss the potential of launching a series of bespoke industry careers fairs in 2024.

The aim of these fairs would be to engage directly with the education sector in its widest sense, to raise awareness of the industry, and to support the longer-term aim of creating a workforce for tomorrow.

It is intended that two pilot events will run early in 2024 in partnership with the local education authorities in Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire to coincide with National Careers Week. After this, the programme will be rolled out to other areas of the country.

Commenting on the initiative, Building Our Skills’ Partnerships Manager, Mark Handley says:

“We have begun a process of consulting closely with both the fenestration industry and local education authority representatives, and the latter has confirmed that there is a strong appetite for bespoke careers fairs organised by Building Our Skills. We’ve been making great progress in getting education departments to recognise the industry as an excellent source of varied, long-term career opportunities, and this is a sensible and ambitious next step for us. The fact that we can help careers professionals in schools to realise their curriculum goals makes this a win-win for all parties.”

Morgan Fisher, Marketing Executive of KUBU, an active member of the Building Our Skills Advisory Panel adds:

“Bespoke careers fairs could be invaluable to us. We would be very enthusiastic to be part of such an initiative. We all have to pull together in order to ensure that the skills shortages that have dogged the industry for years become a thing of the past, not just immediately but in the long term as well. The more we can all do to get youngsters talking to us and considering a career in fenestration, glass and glazing the better.”

Further details of the new industry-bespoke careers fairs will be available following the conclusion of the consultation process, but it is expected that up to twenty companies would be invited to attend each event. These will include a mix of ‘enablers’- organisations that can advise on training, qualifications, routes to industry, apprenticeships and other pathways to employment; national companies that can inspire and excite youngsters about the industry through technology, innovation, environmental advances etc; and local companies who can offer follow-up ‘Inspiration Day’ visits to their factories and facilities in the area, work experience and potential job opportunities.

Anyone interested in getting involved in the programme of industry-bespoke careers fairs should email sayhello@buildingourskills.co.uk or call Mark Handley on 07860 844296.

For the remainder of this year, Building Our Skills will continue to attend other cross-industry careers fairs, and would welcome industry representatives who wish to be involved in these also to get in touch. Venues include Liverpool, Sheffield, Rotherham, Truro, Leeds, Bradford,

Doncaster, Derby, London, Manchester, Stoke and Barnsley. The dates for each venue can be viewed at https://buildingourskills.co.uk/news/building-our-skills-signs-up-to-careers-fairs-programme-for-2023/.