Network Rail has launched a new campaign to attract more female recruits and tackle outdated perceptions of the rail industry which have led to a "scandalous waste" of talent.
Only 2% of applicants to the rail company's apprenticeship scheme over the past five years have been women, while women made up just 8% of applicants on the graduate engineering scheme last year.
In total, 12.7% of Network Rail's workforce is female, and in 2008-09, only 17% of external applicants for jobs at the rail company were from women.
The new recruitment campaign will initially focus on boosting female recruits onto the apprenticeship scheme using a targeted recruitment advertising campaign aimed at women.
Network Rail's HR function will identify current female employees and ask them to attend career fairs and events to talk about their experiences and to star in adverts as case studies of workers at the rail company.

To view the full article please visit the industry website Personal Today.