News / Building a career
THE LOCAL building trade is stepping up its efforts to attract more young apprentices.
Now the industry has added a short video directed mainly at P7 to S4 pupils to its promotional toolbox.
Addressing a launch event in the Shetland Museum and Archives on Thursday night, Shetland Construction Training Group chairman Robert Anderson said building firms could offer valuable career opportunities.
This year the building and allied trades offered more than 30 apprenticeships of which 19 are still available.
Anderson said the building trade was not only competing for school leavers with the oil and gas sector, but also with the growing trend of embarking on college courses.
However he said the perception that better salaries and more secure jobs were available down that route was was not necessarily correct.
“What people often overlook is that while they are at college or university they have to pay for their education, while apprentices are already being paid,” he said.
“It is not a huge wage package in the early years, but they will get their trade and then they have something they can build upon.”
Fellow committee member George Smith added: “This video is a stepping stone to get young folk interested in our industry.”
Meanwhile, the trade’s professional training body CITB is helping employers fund apprenticeships and offers grants to apprentices to help with travel and accommodation costs during their training.
Anyone interested in taking up an apprenticeship as a joiner, plant mechanic, painter and decorator, bricklayer, scaffolder or building technician can find more information at the goconstruct.org website or by e-mailing SCTG training officer Fiona Stirling at shetctg@btinternet.com.
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