EqualEngineers Apprenticeship Fairs Winter 2018

January and February 2018 saw us launch our EqualEngineers Apprenticeship Fairs. Taking on a tour of the UK, we visited Bristol, London, Birmingham and Manchester. In total we had over 100 representatives from over 40 engineering and technology companies speak with over 700 apprenticeship-seekers. Not bad!

“Thanks for putting on such a well organised and professional event in Bristol. we had such a productive time, talked to all the supportive and knowledgeable employers. We came away with some great contacts and opportunities, but most of all a feeling that anything is possible if you just go for it.”
Apprenticeship-seeker,
EqualEngineers Bristol Apprenticeship Fair 2018

Starting in Bristol at We The Curious, our headline sponsor Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) brought along a robotic Counter-Improvised Explosive Device (C-IED) which was a star attraction of the show. The challenge was to use the remote control pad and move the tennis ball from the floor to the chest. It took Mark a fair few attempts to get it right, so he won’t be giving up the day job any time soon! Check out the video:

London took us to the University of East London to our grandest venue, the Great Hall. We had our highest number of school visitors at this event, with the London Design & Engineering UTC bringing along nearly 70 students alone! There was a buzz around the venue with attendees finding out about opportunities at some major London-based brands including Morgan Sindall, Gatwick Airport, Transport for London, Eurostar, Turner & Townsend, Capgemini and Ford. The volunteers on reception included students from UEL (Kashan Sheikh, Tariq Sailani, and Joseph Altor) who were great hosts for the day.

After the success of our inaugural graduate event in 2017, we returned to Millennium Point for our Birmingham event, this time using the Platform area. Visitors got to meet employers in the region such as Amazon, Jaguar Land Rover, Severn Trent, WSP, National Grid, Rolls-Royce and JN Bentley.

Just wanted to say, thanks again for inviting us along to the Careers Fair at We The Curious. The Y11 Students found this to be a great opportunity to get used to speaking with different employers in a professional manner and one of the students realised he had a natural talent for coding, which is quite impressive.
Career Guidance Professional
EqualEngineers Bristol Apprenticeship Fair 2018

We were delighted to see a group of apprenticeship-seekers visit us with their British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters from BID Employment who support deaf, hard or hearing and deafblind people. After building on our coverage of our disability in engineering seminar, we were incredibly pleased to see that the audience we seek to attract and engage are getting the message about our events. There was an educative piece here too for exhibitors on how to communicate via a BSL Interpreter. It can be daunting if you have not done it before, and it makes us ever more determined to break down these barriers to create inclusive learning opportunities, and make people comfortable in how to handle situations they may not have experienced prior.

Our final event was in Manchester at the highly appropriate, Museum of Science and Industry. Exhibitors included Amazon, Capgemini, Wood, BAE Systems, Anglo-Eastern and many more showcasing their great opportunities.

Check out our gallery at the bottom of this page for pictures.

After a busy series of events, we were very pleased to have been able to help over 700 prospective apprenticeship-seekers investigate a career in engineering and technology. We help companies invest in their future talent pipeline by building awareness to people of opportunities with their organisation.

“I just want to say thank you for the range of engineering apprenticeships you put on yesterday, it has helped me a lot to decided what and where I want to go and what I want to do.”
Apprenticeship-seeker
EqualEngineers Manchester Apprenticeship Fair 2018

Our next series of events will be in September 2018, which will be a series of combined Apprenticeship & Graduate Careers Fairs. Click on the link below to register: