Routes into STEM – Could apprenticeships solve the tech talent crunch?

Routes into STEM – Could apprenticeships solve the tech talent crunch?

There’s an acute shortage of candidates for tech jobs – in fact, research suggests tens of millions of potential roles are going unfilled. In a poll with global technology chiefs conducted by MIT’s ‘Technology Review’, a majority found that they weren’t getting enough candidates for roles, and those who did apply lacked necessary skills. 

Clearly, there’s a problem here. So what can tech companies do to bring more talent through the door? Could building a baseline of investment in new, or even unqualified, talent be a solution?

Maninder Randhawa believes so. He’s the Early Careers Leader for Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the UKIMEA region, and spends his time building programmes to upskill the organizations new talent. He believes that, whilst there’s absolutely a place for old hands, the fresh ideas and ability to adapt and mould that new talent brings makes them more than worth the investment.

A case in point is Stu Franks of Alces flight, an HPC services provider. He began at the firm at age 18 as a school leaver, and now heads a team building and marketing services and solutions. He believes apprenticeships, like his own, offer a route to great talent that’s not suited to academia but has all the practical talent and intelligence needed to excel in the field, and values demonstrable skills, personality and attitude above degrees and certificates.

In order to attract young people into the STEM fields, though, they need to know about it. That’s where outreach groups like Stemettes come in. They are a UK-based organization dedicated to reaching out to underrepresented groups in schools across the country, with programs to engage young people in STEM careers as an option, and provide mentoring and support for them to take their first steps. Floriane Fidegnon got into tech through the work of the group and now sits on the board, something her employer encourages as it creates a virtuous cycle of bringing in new talent, and encouraging existing talent like Floriane to become engaged ambassadors for the field.

But what about the kind of soft skills that come with a degree – just not one in STEM topics? Erin Young is a case in point. She’s a lead researcher for the Alan Turing Institute, which is dedicated to solving societal problems with technology. She came into the field from a background in classics, where her skills in research, reasoning and analytics, combined with a love of data analytics, made a move into tech a great – if seemingly disconnected – jump. 

Sources cited in this episode:

85 million unfilled tech roles by 2030: https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/talent-crunch-future-of-work

MIT Technology Review poll with tech leaders on talent shortages: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/21/1079695/new-approaches-to-the-tech-talent-shortage/

STEM apprenticeships in the UK increased by over a quarter in the last decade: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/apprenticeships-and-traineeships

The National Science Foundation report on the STEM workforce between 2011 and 2021: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/the-stem-workforce#:~:text=The%20size%20of%20the%20STEM,2011%20to%2024%25%20in%202021

UK government report into diversity and inclusion in STEM: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/34531/documents/190060/default/

 

Creators & Guests

Host

Michael Bird

What is Technology Untangled?

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Maninder Randhawa (00:06):
It does take bravery. It does take courage. And the reason for that is it takes a bit of time to see results. You're not going to get it in the first six months, but then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, all that time and effort that we have spent, we're getting some phenomenal results now with these early careers because we need these new ideas, need these new innovators. And the new generations, they just think completely different."

Michael Bird (00:30):
Tech talent is a hot topic in the industry. The field is growing at a phenomenal rate. High performance computing, generative AI, machine learning, big data, cloud, edge, 5G, 6G, quantum, blockchain. Yeah, there's a myriad of incredible technologies that have exploded in the last five or so years, and they all need people to make them a reality. In fact, research by consultancy firm Korn Ferry, which we've linked in the show notes, found that by 2030 there's due to be up to 85 million potential unfilled tech roles globally. That's roughly the population of Germany. Wow.

Aubrey Lovell (01:12):
The challenge is those jobs aren't attracting enough candidates or the right ones. In a poll with global tech chiefs conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Technology Review, 64% claimed candidates for their IT tech jobs lacked the necessary skills or experience. Another 56% believe there's an overall shortage of candidates. But what if you threw away the rule book when it comes to hiring qualified candidates and attracted people with skills built in other areas, or even built the right employee from scratch?

Michael Bird (01:46):
Well, in this episode, we'll be looking at non-conventional roots into STEM careers and how looking outside the box might just be the solution to our talent crunch.

(02:08):
You're listening to Technology Untangled, a show which looks at the rapid evolution of technology and unravels the way it's changing our world. We are hosts Michael Bird...

Aubrey Lovell (02:18):
And Aubrey Lovell.

(02:24):
So as much as we love the technical side of this podcast, the machines, hardware, breakthroughs, and the incredible developments, it's the people who work in STEM professions that make it all happen. The thing is, the tech field can suffer from a lack of diversity of individuals and thought. So Michael, when you think about the route into STEM industries, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Michael Bird (02:45):
Well, I guess probably going to university or as you'd say, college.

Aubrey Lovell (02:49):
That's right. Yep. And while that certainly used to be the route you'd take, you would study at grade school and then you'd step up into college or as you might say, university, and then you basically glide into any number of STEM roles. That used to be the traditional route. But that misconception is old because STEM is so much more accessible in 2023. Maninder Randhawa, or Manny for short, leads Hewlett Packard Enterprises early careers program for the U.K., Ireland, and Middle East.

Maninder Randhawa (03:17):
When I first took this job, it was just pretty much the intern and graduate door. For me, it's like, well, we need to do better. And how many doors can we open? Whether it's through an internship, a graduate scheme, apprenticeships, we've got an incredible STEM program that is led by everybody in that group is doing it on top of their day job. They're all ambassadors, they're super passionate, they're volunteers. And that group is actually ran by an ex-apprentice who's been here for five years, and they go to local schools, local colleges, target individuals who literally are 11, 12, 13 years, 16 years old about why they should have a career in tech. But especially targeting those underprivileged backgrounds, different races, different cultures, different genders, we want to be as open as possible.

(04:04):
So the STEM community, I thank them. They do an incredible job, but that's another way that we encourage young talent and that could be for a different perspective. That could be bringing them in for work experience. That could be us going to their school and college doing something with them. We've also got something a little bit new that we've done over the last year called a T-Level. So these are college students that have worked at HPE for 26 weeks. They did a Monday and a Tuesday at HPE. The rest of it, they would go back into their college. That's something new. We want to explore as many different opportunities to bring in young talent or give them exposure to tech because if we're giving them exposure and they go into tech, even if it's a different company, ideally we'd like them at HPE, we're benefiting that person and we're benefiting the tech industry as well.

(04:56):
And the last bit is we've launched virtual job experience. It's free training, four hours long in software engineering, pre-sales and sales. They learn about the company, they learn about the role, and they learn about what skills they need for those jobs. Really cool thing is they get a certificate at the end of it. They can put that on their CV.

Michael Bird (05:21):
Now there are so many ways to get a career in STEM and then so many opportunities to expand and grow once you are in a role. Apprenticeships are a key one and are growing in popularity. Where I am in the U.K., the number of engineering related apprenticeships has increased by just over a quarter in the decade to 2021. Gaining qualifications on the job offers the promise of careers to people who may otherwise be overlooked due to not being suited to academia, which when you think about it is a little bit silly.

Stu Franks (05:50):
Hi, I'm Stu Franks and I'm a development manager at Alces Flight Ltd. Alces Flight themselves are a HPC integrator and managed services provider. I work with a small software team to develop our in-house software products, and I also visit trade shows to show off those products. I didn't even know what supercomputers were when I started working with them. I dropped out of school during A-levels. I only finished the first of the two years. I do have some AS-levels, but I started an apprenticeship in IT at a small local company to me, heard about the job through a neighbor who actually worked there and said, "Oh, we're looking for an IT apprentice. Would you be interested?" And I was trying to do something other than education because I'd reached that point where I wasn't really enjoying classes and listening and just taking notes and that I didn't feel like I was quite going in or sticking or engaging enough.

(06:45):
They definitely seemed to be looking for a young apprentice, someone under the age of 20 from what I gathered to work with their only system admin they had at the time who had probably more years experience than I had years on the planet when I started there. So it seemed very much like a two prompt thing. There's that risk of someone who's not necessarily going to come in and be effective immediately, but also someone young, learning things your way. First job, there's a lot of opportunity for growth there.

(07:16):
And in that first month I went from having never built a computer in my life to building over 50 different computers and stringing them together in a network to run HPC applications, specifically computational fluid dynamics. So that's things like simulating airflow and various other physics on oil rigs, anything really to simulate environmental effects and optimize things like airflow, downforce. Other keywords I've heard in my time, I don't quite understand. It was really going into the deep end with that sort of stuff. And about 11 months, I want to say, into my career there was when the senior system admin left, which left me as a fresh 18-year-old looking after, I think it was about 400 nodes across 10 or so clusters and making sure that the CFD engineers jobs were running and not failing. There were 15 of them and 1 of me, and that is certainly a sink or swim moment. It was just before my 17th birthday I started working and yep, I am now 27, 10+ years experience in HPC. People think I've either aged really well or I'm a liar.

Michael Bird (08:31):
So Aubrey, I don't know if you know, but I actually never went to university.

Aubrey Lovell (08:35):
No way. That's really interesting. How did you navigate all of that?

Michael Bird (08:39):
Well, when I was in year 13, which I guess is 12th grade for you, I just was like, "I'm just a bit done with sitting in a classroom and I really want to just get out there and do stuff." So I got a job in an IT department and that just became a bit of a springboard for me. Now, I didn't do a formal apprenticeship, but actually working in that IT department was basically like an apprenticeship for me anyway. I learned so much and it was all on the job and I just absolutely loved it and I realized I just thrived in that environment. So I really understand where Stu's at, absolutely. University isn't necessarily for everyone. And certainly here in the U.K. there are so many more opportunities around things like apprenticeships, but also just I think employers are way more open to it.

Aubrey Lovell (09:24):
Yeah.

Michael Bird (09:25):
Yeah, which is great.

Aubrey Lovell (09:27):
No, I think it's really fascinating. I think it's great that you are a success story for that and the route that you decided to take at the time it was non-traditional, but now you're seeing a lot more people go that route, whether it's a financial reason or there's just so many more opportunities. You think about all the certifications that you can get just for tech without having to enter into a four-year university or college. The opportunities are endless.

Michael Bird (09:50):
Yeah, and I guess there's an element of some of these jobs, it's a lot less about what you've learned at college or university and more about the stuff that actually is quite hard to pick up in formal training. It's just like you have to do the thing to be able to learn those things. So I mean, that's some of the bigger skills that I've learned, how to problem solve and all of those sorts of things, which yeah, I just learned on the job. So...

Aubrey Lovell (10:15):
I genuinely did not know that. That's really interesting. Fun fact of the day.

Michael Bird (10:19):
Fun fact of the day.

Aubrey Lovell (10:21):
Stu and Michael are proof that a career in STEM doesn't have to just follow that straight path from grade school to university and then into a career, although that is still obviously a very good route to take. But even the wonderful world of STEM can take you down all sorts of alleyways. Erin Young is a great case in point. She got into tech through a very unusual route, a history degree.

Dr Erin Young (10:43):
Hi, so I am Erin. I'm a research fellow working in the public policy program at the Alan Turing Institute. And just to give a bit of background on the Turing if you haven't heard of us before, we undertake research in data science and AI to try and tackle the big challenges in science, society, the economy. And as part of that, we partner and collaborate with universities, industry, public sector to try to apply this research to real world problems.

(11:15):
So I didn't realize it at the time when I was reading classics, but it was setting me up really nicely for what I do now. When I think back actually, a lot of the skills quite often called soft skills, even though I don't really like that term, but a lot of the skills that I honed during my classics degree, so critical thinking and the like that are usually listed off as soft skills are really, really helpful for working in STEM because we have a lot of very squarely technical people, so engineers, developers, and I'm heartened to see that this is happening more. We really need to take more of an interdisciplinary approach to technology to include social scientists and ethicists and people from humanities backgrounds to bring lots of different viewpoints.

Aubrey Lovell (12:05):
The idea of bringing in people from a variety of different backgrounds is absolutely vital here. Be that from different academic disciplines, different social or ethnic backgrounds, or different age groups. But why? Why is it important to bring in and nurture new talent rather than relying on experienced candidates?

Maninder Randhawa (12:23):
They just bring in a lot of positive energy, passion. They're open to learning. They might not specifically know those skills or have the knowledge, but they just bring a raw enthusiasm to just want to do well because they're so grateful for the opportunity. So for us, it's what can we give them to have the best possible career? It's bringing in those future leaders, those innovators, those thinkers of the industry. We want different thoughts and perspectives. It's fine bringing loads of experienced talent in, but that might be for a specific task, a project, a business unit. You're going to need a good mix of experience, proven track record people, and inexperienced people as well.

(13:09):
What you don't want is just a team full of experienced people, masters who have done it before in different companies and industries. You've got an awesome team, but it's very short term. Yeah, some might stay for a very long time, but what happens if they take early retirement? What happens if they leave the company? They have taken all that knowledge, skill, and experience out. Some of them as well might be a bit stuck in their ways. They might be quite hardened and a little bit of a rock. What we need is a couple of sponges, open to learning, open to new ways.

(13:44):
From a business point of view, it can be very costly to get external talent. The recruitment cycles are much longer. You pay a premium to bring in the best talent as well. It can be quite expensive and you're going to struggle with one, retaining these people, but two, having succession plans. So if you've got a very top-heavy team, you want to bring in that conveyor belt, you want to promote that homegrown talent. That's going to increase your attention and long-term loyalty as well.

Michael Bird (14:12):
Great stuff. Now that said, there are a few occasions where bringing in new talent maybe isn't enough on its own. To get real diversity, you need to reach out to potential talent and convince them that tech is a viable career, reeling in talent if you like. And to achieve greater diversity in tech, a major target of any career outreach program needs to be women. Women only represent 26% of the STEM workforce according to a report by STEM women. And that's not the only alarming statistic. In March 2023, a U.K. government report into diversity and inclusion in STEM found underrepresentation is present in many STEM settings from classrooms to research facilities to boardrooms.

Aubrey Lovell (15:00):
Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation in the U.S. reported that between 2011 and 2021, the STEM workforce grew from 29 million to 34.9 million. And in those 10 years, there was an increase in diversity in terms of underrepresented minorities working in STEM sectors. And the women's share of the STEM workforce population grew at a faster rate than men. But of course there's still a long way to go. And of course we've linked all those stats in the show notes.

Michael Bird (15:29):
So fortunately there are groups out there doing just that. And one of those is the Stemettes, a U.K.-based outreach organization.

Floriane Fidegnon (15:37):
My name's Floriane Fidegnon. I am a manufacturing engineer by background, but also a science communication and policy nerd. So I work with a number of charities, but most prominently Stemette Futures. And we're an organization looking to increase gender representation across the STEAM sectors. So I was a beneficiary of Stemettes. I'm now a chair of their youth board and a trustee on their charity board.

(16:01):
So Stemettes was started 10 years ago with the core mission to increase gender representation across the STEM industry. So science, technology, engineering, and maths. And then over time, that has evolved into STEAM, so adding the arts into that as well. We're pretty small still, so I think a headcount of about 20-ish people. To date, we've engaged about 33,000 young people, young women and non-binary people across a number of interventions. So we have our shorter-term interventions, our medium-term interventions, and our long-term interventions.

(16:30):
And the short to medium are all about inspiration. They're all about pulling young people in for maybe an hour to maybe a half day. And this includes our big conferences, our hackathons that are really about teaching young people, what is it to code? What does it mean to be a software engineer? What are the opportunities in STEM that you may never have considered? And teaching them over a longer period of time what it means to be a person in STEM. What are the opportunities in STEM? What jobs could you end up doing? What does the day-to-day life look like? How lucrative of a career might it be?

(17:02):
And this usually takes place through things like the youth board program, but most I think prominently through our mentoring program. So Student to Stemettes. So that's why we work with private organizations and they allow their employees to volunteer and they volunteer with the young people and they mentor them through a period of time in a structured program. And I think that's honestly so valuable for them and gives the young people an opportunity to have a look into the world of STEM at a much earlier age.

Aubrey Lovell (17:28):
Bringing young people into tech is a great ambition, but of course a STEM career doesn't have to look like a STEM career right off the bat. It can be a passion which builds from other angles as life goes on. Here's Erin Young.

Dr Erin Young (17:41):
I think about this a lot. My career path hasn't been linear at all. It was quite a messy process in a fun way. And just to give a bit of background I think would be helpful. So our project, we conduct interdisciplinary data science and social science research. And our overarching aim is to explore ethical and economic and governance related issues which stem from the underrepresentation of women and marginalized groups in AI. So we work with policymakers and industry stakeholders to try to inform policy measures and other interventions around this.

(18:21):
But I think now when I connect the dots backwards, it makes complete sense that I find myself at the institute solving these problems. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. I worked in marketing for a little bit. I then went into FinTech and that's when I started to realize where other passions lie as well. So I did my PhD, my Dphil at Oxford in education and a field called STS, which is science and technology studies, so essentially sociology of technology. And before that I was a researcher at Stanford and the Oxford Internet Institute. And then I've also worked for the UN in Paris, Kantar, Thomson Reuters in New York. So my career has moved around a bit.

(19:07):
But essentially as I went through my career journey, I realized I had this deep interest in how we interact with technologies and why they're built in certain ways and how they affect us and combining this with what kind of effects are these having on society more broadly and particularly inequalities in society. And so in each job I had, I found myself getting closer and closer to the current role of leading the women in data science and AI project.

Michael Bird (19:43):
I think we can safely say that the misconception that there's a straight route into a career in STEM has been well and truly debunked. And equally what we're learning is that once you're in a STEM area, this whole new world of opportunity and career diversification opens up to you. And as Erin and Stu have demonstrated, it's not necessarily part of your plan at the start.

Aubrey Lovell (20:12):
What's also becoming clear is that the traditional hard skills, coding, vocational degrees, and years of experience aren't the only thing that matters. Soft skills such as communication and creative problem solving are just as valuable when looking for good candidates. Here's Stu to explain.

Stu Franks (20:28):
Personally what I look for in a CV and someone who's applying for a job is some semblance of who they actually are. You can get a lot of CVs where it's just education, education, certification, list of coding languages I do, and I don't know who you are. I don't know how you fit into the team. I think there's far more, like I said about soft skills in working that those are far more important than necessarily whether you've got a 1-1 or a 2-1. I want to know what you're interested in, what projects you've done on your own time because that shows the drive that you have to go, "Well, here's one of my interests and here's how I can connect it to a skill." It's all about finding those sorts of things. And we've hired people who don't necessarily have that formal education but have put together a few servers in their own time and they've connected that to some other download server. And it's that stuff that it's the drive I think is more important in a lot of cases.

(21:25):
We do have a bit of a vetting process when it comes to hirings. There's plenty of opportunities for questions, seeing what the answers come through as and how true they seem. And at the end of the day, there's no better way than sitting in the room with someone for an hour and chatting tech really, whether it's showing them through some tools that we make, seeing what questions they ask or seeing how much they seem to understand what's going on or talking to them about some of their personal projects. And it's not necessarily foolproof, but I think it's a good enough way to get a good understanding for who someone is and what their ability is. Because at the end of the day, you wouldn't be going for a graduate position if you could do it all already. It's about how capable you are to learn and listen and communicate.

Michael Bird (22:11):
Manny agrees. In fact, he'd go further and say that even once an apprentice starts showcasing the skills they are building and helping develop those is way more important than actually learning the specifics of the job.

Maninder Randhawa (22:25):
I really don't care too much what they're actually doing in terms of their day job. What I'm looking for is really good people that are happy, healthy, well, performing to a high level, and I'm giving them real life skills that are going to help them not in the career today, but also for the career in the future as well, wherever they move to. So our four key pillars is soft skills, mindset, wellbeing, and high performance. So can we teach them about communication, teamwork? How do they present themselves? It's their first job. How do they organize their diary and their time? How do they figure out from a financial point of view, what do we do with our finances? It's our first paycheck. We want to give them really tangible skills that it doesn't matter what business they go into, you're going to need to speak with people or present your thoughts and ideas or manage your time.

(23:17):
But from a mindset perspective, number two, we want to teach them about having a growth mindset, an open mindset. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to fall over. It's about picking yourself up, learning from it, and continue moving forward. And sometimes you have to move sideways. Sometimes you have to move backwards. As long as you're moving, you're still making progression and it's okay to ask a bunch of silly questions.

(23:42):
But wellbeing, I created this program just before COVID. I never realized how important wellbeing was going to be. I'm glad. I got lucky. I guess with my research, when life hits you the hardest, we want to talk about these topics and be proactive very early in their career. And I get early careers going, "Why are we talking about stress for? Why are we talking about these topics?" And then six months later they go, "Yeah, I'm pretty stressed. I'm glad you spoke about that six months ago." But equally as well, we focus on the cool side of stuff of high performance of we want them to have a long and successful career, earn whatever money they want to earn. I really drill down into why are you doing this? Yes, it's a job. Yes, you'll get a salary, but what is your why? What strengths can you bring?

Michael Bird (24:26):
Of course, in order to get young people into these posts, you've got to get them to apply. So how do you do that? We asked Floriane what a standard journey might look like for a young person being engaged by the Stemettes all the way through to getting that first role.

Floriane Fidegnon (24:40):
So our young people hear about us through multiple different ways. We're quite present and active on social media, but we also work really closely with schools. So that young person probably heard about us from a school and has been encouraged to attend one of our shorter term events that are coming up where they might hear from just a couple of STEM professionals or they might get more involved if it's an active activities. One thing that we always promise is that it's fun-filled, free, and always has food. So they'll attend the event and they'll get those three things. They might receive a laptop if they are part of a longer term intervention and needs IT equipment because we never want access to IT to be a reason why they're unable to engage with our programs.

(25:21):
So they might do that and they might love it. Hopefully if they do love it, they then have access to our locked or private social media, which is only for our young people and that's an opportunity for them to access content relating to role models they may never have heard of and tips on how to apply for universities and all that kind of good stuff. And hopefully they'll start to build their network within those platforms.

(25:43):
And then over time, they'll be encouraged to apply for a longer term intervention. So our mentorship program more specifically. So all of these are big tech employers and that program will usually start around August time just before they get into school and run until about November, December time. They'll meet their mentor, they'll set up their mentor meetings, and then they'll do a bunch of different activities with their mentor, without their mentor, by themselves. And hopefully over time they'll develop a love for STEM if they haven't already, but every journey is pretty unique for our young people.

Michael Bird (26:18):
That sounds pretty amazing. It presents a potential issue though. From an organizational perspective, taking on young people, providing mentors from among your busy staff pool, and hiring candidates without experience is a long-term investment. They aren't going to step into the role. It could take years, it could never happen. They could decide this new world isn't right for them and leave. So what's the answer and is it ultimately worth the effort? Here's Manny again.

Maninder Randhawa (26:45):
It does take bravery. It does take courage. And the reason for that is it takes a bit of time to see results. You're not going to get it in the first 6 months, 12 months, and might even be the first 18 months. But then all of a sudden the magic starts to happen when year two starts to hit, year three and then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, all that time and effort that we have spent, we're getting some phenomenal results now with these early careers." So you've got to have a bit of patience, you've got to have a bit of time. But equally as well, it's a super important part of the business in any tech company because we need these new ideas. We need these new innovators.

(27:22):
And the new generations, they just think completely different. I thought I was young and definitely not to be honest. And with the way I think of stuff and even I'm blown away with stuff. I'm like, "Well actually, why don't we just do it that way? Actually why are we doing things a certain way?" Bringing different people to the mix is super important because HPE has been going on for a very, very long time. And that's the way it's going to continue growing because we are all custodians. We're all here for a short amount of time. We'll take it to a certain level and then the next generation will improve it a little bit more and they'll pass it on to somebody else.

Michael Bird (28:00):
There's a lot of talk about what the employer gets from employees working in STEM, and obviously there are jobs out there and employers want to know that they are getting the right people and that their businesses will benefit. And there are opportunities for growth, for upskilling and re-skilling.

Aubrey Lovell (28:16):
That creates an interesting ecosystem of individuals getting into STEM, feeling supported, wanting to give back, and bringing more people on board. And that in itself can pay huge dividends to firms willing to invest the time and money in bringing in candidates from the outside. Here's Floriane.

Floriane Fidegnon (28:33):
I'm quite fortunate that the flexibility to volunteer has been afforded to me. It means that I can take an hour of the day to go to a school and do a school talk or support a STEM club and then get back to my desk and carry on with the rest of my day and meetings and whatever with very little drama. So that's something I definitely recognize has made a huge difference to how I'm able to do so much. I'm really blessed to have great employers and to have had great employers who are really flexible. The ability to give your employees learning and development opportunities and professional development opportunities just makes you a more interesting human, a more empathetic human. And I think those are the type of people that make up a really fantastic team.

(29:12):
So by volunteering, by engaging with the organizations that I work with, I'm raising my profile, I'm learning new things, I'm building networks, I'm building a name for the organization as well. There are loads of benefits, potentially intangible in some ways, but very much to do with the individual themselves and what they bring back to the organization because they're volunteering, because they're engaging outside of the world of work. I wouldn't be here sitting chatting to you if I hadn't been involved in those programs. There are so many people who have stories like mine. So that's the first thing that employees can do.

Michael Bird (29:43):
It's great advice. So what would some of our other guests suggest to candidates or organizations interested in finding more diverse STEM candidates? Well, for Stu, it's all about looking past the paperwork.

Stu Franks (29:56):
I would say further education isn't always the answer. Find how you learn, find what interests you, and start reaching out. Look for places. And if you can show that you are interested and that you can learn, that means just as much and you can grow and you can adapt. There's a lot out there.

Michael Bird (30:18):
Manny's advice is for those organizations who haven't taken a plunge yet and are still solely hiring experienced staff.

Maninder Randhawa (30:23):
I actually speak to a lot of companies about this, a lot of our key partners or other customers as well, because they're seeing what we've done at HPE. I think the first thing is we were in the same position not too long ago. We had to start from somewhere. I would really just recommend firstly as a company, what is your culture, what is your values, and what are you good at? And build a program off that. Because what you want to do is you don't want to attract all of the talent. You don't want to attract the best talent. You want to attract the best talent that's right for your culture and your values, and that's how you're going to retain them. So watch your USP, what's really good for your company. I'd look into that and I'd start off small. Is it a few apprentices? Maybe we get a couple of interns, a couple of graduates, and build up from there. I wouldn't go into a big bang approach. I'd take things and build over time.

(31:20):
You're definitely going to get the naysayers. You're definitely going to get people saying, "It's not worth it. What's the point in putting all this time, effort, and resources? We're training talent for the future. They're going to go to a different company." Reality is this generation, they're going to jump jobs a lot more than previous generations. I think that's just a fact. I think the key is though, retaining that very best home, the top talent that fits your value and culture. I think that's what we should be aiming for. And then equally as well, the early careers that do come in, have they had the best possible time in the company? Because let's just say they go to a different company. What we want is would they recommend Hewlett Packard Enterprise to their friends and family? And if they do, we've done a great job because who knows, we might get a friend or cousin, whoever, of this person join us as well.

Aubrey Lovell (32:12):
So if you're listening to this and thinking about a career in STEM, firstly, great choice. Secondly, welcome. The industry can't wait to hear from you, whoever you are or wherever you're coming from. Hey, sometimes they even hire podcasters.

Michael Bird (32:30):
You've been listening to Technology Untangled. We've been your hosts, Michael Bird and Aubrey Lovell. And a huge thanks to our guests, Erin Young, Floriane Fidegnon, Maninder Randhawa, and Stu Franks. You can find more information on today's episode in the show notes. And this is the seventh episode in the fourth series of Technology Untangled. And next time we're exploring our ever-increasing thirst for bandwidth in sports and what teams, venues, and organizations are doing about it. Do make sure you subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don't miss out, and to check out on the last three series.

Aubrey Lovell (33:04):
This episode was produced by Samuel Datta-Paulin and Zoe Anderson with production support from Harry Morton, Alicia Kempson, Alison Paisley, Alyssa Mitry, Camilla Patel, Alex Podmore, and Chloe Sewell. Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wessinger, Judy-Anne Goldman, Katie Guarino, and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, Carlos Alberto Suarez, and Ambar Maldonado. Technology Untangled is a Lower Street production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.