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By CAITLIN CROWLEY
A TRIO of tenacious teenagers is on a mission to help female apprentices build their confidence and skills, to help ensure they finish their training and find their feet in traditionally male-dominated workplaces, like mining and construction.
Taleah Pearson, 19, and sisters Aleah and Kayla Hill, 18, are the CEOs of Future Lady Tradies – a support network specifically for female apprentices looking to go into the blue collar sector.
“Through working in recruitment for the construction industry, we noticed that no females were applying for jobs with us,” Taleah Pearson said.
“We took that as an opportunity and saw a niche in the market to jump on it and make a change in the industry.”
Future Lady Tradies has three core goals – attract, connect and retain female apprentices – and attracting women to the sector needs to start much earlier, according to Aleah Hill.
“I think we’re just targeting them a bit too late, in senior school, whereas we should be talking to them in grade 9, even grade 8. Which is what Future Lady Tradies will do,” she said.
“We want to spread the awareness and knowledge that it isn’t just a construction site that you can work on – you can work in the mines, you can work on boats. You can work in so many different areas.”
“We also want to highlight that it is a professional and viable career pathway,” Taleah Pearson said. “There’s a lot of stigma around, “oh you just want to be a tradie.
“You can make a career out of it – you do not have to be on the tools forever.”
The three young women work for Meka Recruitment and launched Future Lady Tradies with guidance from its Director Melissa Dale.
Dale told the Caller there was a “massive need” for the kind of peer support Future Lady Tradies offers.
“There’s no support for girls in that age demographic, from 16 to 24,” Dale said.
“I think having the girls in that age demographic will help retain a lot of the girls because what we’re hearing is that a lot of girls don’t complete their apprenticeship because they don’t have friends to talk to about hard days.”
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The Future Lady Tradies team recently presented at the SEGRA National Summit in Toowoomba and want to engage with more female apprentices on the Darling Downs.
Aleah Hill said the apprentices she’s met with so far had been excited to know, they weren’t the “only girls in the industry” and that there are people they could talk to.
“The feedback we’ve received from young apprentices is that they feel really comfortable talking to us about some issues that they may be facing on site,” she said.
“I do think they kind of look to us as like a big sister,” Kayla Hill said.
“We have one apprentice that’s 16 – in year 10 at school – and she was having a hard decision as to what work she wanted to do in construction, and that’s when we took her out for breakfast and created that connection with her and helped her decide on what to do.”
Melissa Dale said the initiative had been welcomed by construction industry leaders, with the likes of Hutchinson Builders and MEGT throwing support behind the idea.
“There’s massive support for it – not only from the women in the industry but from the men,” Dale said.
“Everyone just wants to jump onboard – so the older females that have done their trades, they want to come on as mentors.
“I honestly didn’t think it would take off as fast as it did, but I guess it’s the energy that the girls give.”
“It’s just incredible to watch the dedication and the effort that they’re putting into it – for 18 year olds you wouldn’t expect them to have as much commitment as they do.”
For more information head to the Future Lady Tradies Facebook page.