b'Partner News Summer 2021 13EnterprisePartner Spotlight SeriesA Conversation with Engineering ApprenticeAbigail Shoulders from ContinentalIntroducing Abigail Shoulders.Working for Continental since 2019, AbigailHow are the development opportunitiesWhat are your plans and aspirations attends Chichester University, UK as partfor you at Continental? for the future of your career?of her Apprenticeship. In our latest PartnerGood. Ive been given the freedom toFirst of all, finish my apprenticeship! After Spotlight, we caught up with Abigail tolead the PSR project, but even getting thethat Im considering doing a masters. I shine a light on her work with Continental,chance to work with more senior engineersalways thought I would want to stay as a her passion for STEM, and kickstarting heris incredibly useful.developer but actually I might want to move engineering career as an Apprentice. more into management. Once Ive finished Ive worked on a fair bit of pair programmingmy apprenticeship, Ill be in a better position When did you decide you wanted torecently, which was helpful in finding outto decide. I also plan on starting my own become an engineer? how other people develop and designProfessional Registration journey soon. Ive always been interested in STEMsoftware, as well as better coding Watch this space!subjects at school, particularly Maths. Whenpractises. I also have a mentor in-house I was choosing my GCSEs, there was thewho I can speak to, along with regularHow have you benefitted from option to choose Computer Science. My dadcatch ups with my line manager on how myContinental being an IET Enterprise also works in IT, so it just seemed a naturaldevelopment is going. Partner?choice to pursue.Opportunities like this to showcase my We are aware that only 14% in STEMcareer so far! My colleagues speak very Initially I wanted to attend University fullroles across the industry are women,highly of The IET and how it encourages time, but my A Level teacher introducedhow have you found your experiencediversity within engineering. me to Apprenticeships. Ive always learntas a woman in STEM and do you thinkContinental and The IET.better by doing; Im really glad I took theenough is being done as a whole within Apprenticeship route as Ive already learntthe industry? If you want to be featured as part ofmore on the job than I ever would have inIve been lucky that I havent experiencedour Partner Spotlight Series, get in a classroom full-time at University.any sexism in the workplace, but it istouch on partnernews@theiet.org/fairly common that Ill be the only womanpartnerships@theiet.orgHow are you finding yourattending a meeting or in a lecture at Apprenticeship so far? Any interestinguniversity. Im the only woman on my projects youre involved in? university course, and this was the case on Very good thank you! Its only my secondone of my A Level courses as well. year, but were starting to move into theIn an academic setting, there have more technical work. Im currently workingbeen situations where Ive felt I have on three separate projects: to prove I am just as good as my male counterparts, but fortunately this has Starting off as sole developer but nownot been too common. Although Ive not moving towards project owner for ourpersonally experienced it in my workplace, automated project status review (PSR)unfortunately women do still encounter reports sexism across the industry. 3D visualisation, which is 3D environment visualisation for ourI think its hugely important to encourage recordings in reports that are generated girls to explore STEM at a young age. I went A test and release automation systemto an all-girls secondary school and there for a specific project. When a softwarewere not as many opportunities as the release is created, theres a testingother schools in my area. Fortunately, they process it needs to go through, whichdid have Computer Science, but not other takes quite a lot of time to do manually! subjects I would have liked to explore. Abigail Shoulders'