Rather than relying on a ‘refer a friend’ recruitment strategy, Network Rail is widening its tactics in the hope of pulling in applications from further afield. 

After analysing applications, the company, which owns and manages much of the rail network in Britain, found a lot were coming from people who had been referred by friends and family.

“So we realised that we had a problem there,” talent acquisition manager Alasdair Waddell told Recruiter. 

To change the make-up of the organisation and “move the company culture forward”, Network Rail is expanding its schools outreach programme, proactively talking to communities, attending regional events and job fairs, and softening the language used in job descriptions and adverts. 

Over the past year, Waddell explained, the company has built up a schools and communities outreach programme solely focused on promoting its apprenticeship scheme.

“What we had done previously was rely quite heavily on online and print advertising media to attract people into our apprenticeship scheme. What we realised was the message wasn’t necessarily going out,” Waddell said, adding the company was not getting as many applications as it would have liked. 

Last year, Network Rail targeted final-year students, “because we were just purely trying to get people through the door for our apprenticeship scheme”.

This year, he said, “what we’re looking to do is set the bar a little bit lower in terms of the age range, so looking at the 13-14 [age] mark in terms of getting that message out”.

“[It’s] not purely a ‘come and work for Network Rail’ message, it’s less of a corporate message and more about getting our people out and into those schools and community centres – talking about their role as an engineer and why they chose to do it as a career and what they get out of it.” 

In the mix, too, are job fairs, where company representatives use games to get young people excited about engineering and discover the skills they would need to pursue a career in the sector.

Games include building a bridge capable of bearing a certain amount of weight with given materials.

It has also, following research from WISE [Women in Science and Engineering], completed a “copy wash” and cleansed all material around its apprenticeship and graduate opportunities of “masculine language”, such as “you will” to better appeal to females. 

Having just completed a recruitment cycle, results are already clear, he says – 5% of apprenticeship applications were from women, up from 4% last year, and 30% of applications for graduate roles were from women, up from 24% last year.

Overall, 14% of Network Rail’s workforce is female. 

The company takes on both graduates and apprentices, about 200 from each community each a year.

• Want to comment on this story? The Comment box is at the bottom of the page. Sorry for the glitch but just scroll right down and share your opinions!