HS2

HS2 pledges to double its investment in graduate recruitment

Back in September 2018, at their Skills, Education and Employment event, HS2 illustrated their commitment to furthering a diverse workforce that addressed the gender and age imbalances that are commonplace across construction and rail engineering.

HS2 Ltd established a Future Talent network, which set out a year-on-year assurance to ensuring that a percentage of the workforce who will design, construct and deliver HS2 is made up of both graduates and apprentices.

With over a quarter of the UK’s rail engineers aged over 55 and predicted to retire in the next ten years, HS2 says investing in future talent is vital to making sure the UK has the skills it needs to support the Government’s pledge to major infrastructure and transport improvement programmes.

Over 1,000 graduates applied for its 2020 programme and they took the decision to more than double the number of graduates it welcomes into its Birmingham and London-based teams this year from nine to 21.

Currently, the final stages of the recruitment and selection process is underway and in October, graduates will join HS2’s Engineering, Urban Design, Innovation, Environment and Commercial Development teams.

HS2’s Talent Manager, Karen Davis said: “The increase in applications we received this year was overwhelming and with the impacts of COVID-19 widely reported to be adversely affecting young people’s employment prospects, we really wanted to do more.

“HS2 is committed to providing the jobs and helping develop the skills to show off the very best of British engineering. We’ll now welcome 21 graduates and 22 apprentices into HS2 Ltd in September, which is in addition to the opportunities also available with our Joint Venture partners and across the supply chain.”

Images: HS2 Ltd