Q&A: Natalie Desty, Director of STEM Returners, on getting engineering careers back on track

Natalie, tell us a little a bit about your professional background before you found STEM Returners.

After graduating from Portsmouth University in the UK, I started a career in recruitment and worked for a large recruitment company for 12 years. After noticing an apparent lack of progress in diversity and inclusion within STEM industries and working with candidates struggling to return from a career break, I started STEM Returners to try and break down outdated practices and challenge recruitment bias.

What issues were you seeing within the industry?

What struck me the most was how hard it was for people who have had a career break to re-enter their profession. Returners were facing insurmountable barriers when wanting to return to STEM roles. These talented, educated and dedicated people – especially women and candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds – were being let down by outdated recruitment methods and bias that prevent them from getting an interview, let alone being offered the role. There is a perception that a career break automatically leads to a deterioration of skills. But the reality is, that many people on a career break keep themselves up to date with their industry, are able to refresh their skills easily when back in work and have developed new transferable skills that would actually benefit their employers.

So, I set up a small pilot returners programme which saw a group of returners take part in a paid placement for 12 weeks. At that time, there was no guarantee of a job at the end of it – but the scheme allows employers to see the talent these people have, and the returners get the opportunity to enhance their skills and get more experience in an inclusive environment. The pilot was a great success and from there it’s grown and grown, and we’ve now returned more than 500 people back to STEM industries, which is a wonderful milestone.

What have you learnt about returners over the years?

That they can be anyone. They could be the 2021 graduate with a neuro-diverse brainset who doesn’t perform well in assessment centres; they could be parents who have taken a break to care for young children, a skilled and experienced refugee looking to restart their career in the UK, or they could be a candidate looking to return from redundancy after a 30-year career. And they don’t have to be out of work for a specific amount of time – a few months, a few years, a decade – a gap on the CV is a gap and sadly, that gap stops people from getting a role they could really excel in.

It's important to remember that the majority of people do not take a career breakthrough choice, many are on a break because of caring for another or through circumstances out of their control. They shouldn’t be penalised for that.

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How have you seen the industry change when it comes to returners?

The industry is opening itself up to returners more and more, which is great. The feedback we receive from our host organisations is always very positive. More organisations are running programmes and companies are running more than one, which is also very positive. However, we’ve also seen companies ask for a specific type of returner. For example, they need to be female and have had a break for more than two years and that’s not really inclusion. Inclusion is an overarching culture encompassing diversity, equality, and many other aspects of our working lives. Trying to include a certain demographic over and above another, isn’t inclusion.

It's slow progress but it is progress and that’s very positive for returners and the industry.

Do you have any returner success stories?

We have so many it’s hard to choose but a few spring to mind….

Ujala Mustafa had been out of the engineering industry for 10 years before taking part in a programme at BAE Systems in Glasgow. She graduated Leeds University with an MEng in Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering and became the only female engineer on an emergency power plant project in Kuwait. She got married and had her first child, which was a difficult pregnancy. She now has three children and moved back to the UK in 2014 and found it incredibly difficult to get back into the engineering industry. She applied for more than 100 jobs but didn’t hear back from any of them. She is now a senior engineer working in product change management.

Similarly, Renu Amin applied for hundreds of jobs too and wasn’t getting anywhere. She took a job in a supermarket to make sure she had some money coming into the home. Despite having a degree and having years of experience, she wasn’t getting any feedback to applications. Renu took part in one of our programmes with Cyclife Aquila Nuclear and is now in a permanent role as a Mechanical Design Engineer

How can we help more returners? 

Really, it’s just about giving people an opportunity - don’t let a career break rule someone out and find ways to give candidates equal opportunities. Many outdated recruitment practices are harming the growth of much-needed diversity and inclusion within STEM. We need to challenge unconscious bias and actively seek out diversity, which is proven to increase business success. Make sure job opportunities and career development are accessible to everyone and address inequalities in your internal systems.