MENTORING HELPS THE RAIL INDUSTRY RETAIN TALENT AND FIND PASSIONATE INDIVIDUALS WHO COULD BE OVERLOOKED ENTIRELY
“I was thrilled when she was offered the role. Coming from the care sector, hers was not a typical route into the rail industry. But I could see she had something to offer.”
Carolyn Salmon, a Lead Assessor and Signatory at Ricardo, is reflecting on her first year in the Women in Rail Mentoring Programme.
In February 2020 Carolyn was matched with a mentee who had been finding it difficult to gain a foothold in the industry, despite self-funding her way through an engineering course and evidently displaying a passion for rail.
“She had qualifications from her training course and was gaining occasional nightshift trackwork experience on a zero-hours contract, but she was trying to fit it all in around her main job in the care sector”.
“She had already sent out several applications for a rail engineering role without success and was beginning to worry that her experience was not going to be relevant enough to secure the full-time role she had devoted so much time towards achieving”.
