Reaching out to encourage diverse communities into technical apprenticeships. Adding gender to the equation.
Hosted by Tony Pitchford, Key Account Manager - Apprenticeships, BCS
Joined by guest speaker Gillian Arnold, Managing Director - Tectre
Girls make up a real minority in IT Apprenticeships. Of the 4,000 Infrastructure Technician** registered through the BCS at the moment just over 7% are female.
This has two impacts; We only access a small proportion of the available talent and we fail to capitalise (across industry) on the financial and innovation benefits which arrive with diverse teams. Of the network engineers taking apprenticeships, just under 5% are female, and apprentice coders are 87% male!
Clearly, we have some challenges in attracting girls into the technical professions. Gillian Arnold will look at Bias in our approach to recruitment and advertising and will talk through some of the best practice in helping to encourage more young women to embark on a career in technology.
You will learn:
• The concepts around Unconscious Bias
• How bias affects recruitment, marketing, advertising and assessment
• Some tips for combating bias
• What other organisations are doing to change the situation for young women moving into tech
*depending on questions / contributions from attendees.
**BCS has 11,500 registered apprentices in total.
Gillian has extensive experience in the IT industry and setup her own IT Staffing and Services company, Tectre, in late 2009. Tectre provides recruitment, training, and consultancy to CIOs, IT Managers and beyond, and focuses on helping companies with their positive action campaigns to attract more women into their technical teams.
