Last week, 50 of the UK’s brightest female science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) students attended Jaguar Land Rover’s Furthering Futures career immersion programme.
The course aims to challenge outdated perceptions that automotive careers are only suitable for men and inspire more young women to apply for advanced, higher or degree apprenticeship opportunities.
Jaguar Land Rover believes it is important to allow young people to explore real business careers whilst still in education. It is only with this insight that they can make effective decisions about what excites them; their passions and plan their next steps to turn their hopes into reality. We need people from all backgrounds to enable us to deliver exciting products for our future, creating experiences people love for life whilst also enhancing people's quality of life through Destination Zero ‑ zero accidents, zero emissions and zero congestion. This week, we’ve encouraged female students to explore our future technologies to help them consider a range of careers with Jaguar Land Rover. We are delighted that 90 talented women have already joined our business after participating in previous Furthering Futures programmes.
Caroline Barber
Talent and People Capability Director
Participants spent a day at the National Automotive Innovation Centre here they participated in a discussion panel about women in engineering before an interactive tour of the Autonomous Research and Development facility. The students then headed to Gaydon’s Advanced Product Creation Centre where they rotated around various engineering departments including Body Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Design and Powertrain. The course concluded with talks about the apprenticeship application process and mock interview sessions.
It’s been a really interesting, hands on and intriguing few days! The course has opened my eyes to a potential career in engineering and I’m 100% more interested in engineering after this week. It’s made me realise there’s so much more to Jaguar Land Rover than just building cars! My favourite part was learning about VR! I’d never seen VR being used for anything apart from video games but seeing how this technology was used in engineering was really exciting!