Brogan, our Marketing Manager, managed to book a meeting with Hannah, HR at a Manufacturers to have a chat with her about her career in the Construction Industry. The chat was recorded and transcribed to give you an insight in her experience being a women in the industry.
Brogan: How long have you worked in the in this industry?
Hannah: So, I started my career in HR about twenty-five years ago, went into HR straight from university, did my university course in business and HR, and then specialized in that. I’ve been in this sort of building products construction industry for, about the last twenty years now. So yeah, quite, quite a stretch.
Brogan: Yeah. And what does your role entail?
Hannah: So, I’m in a very generalist, HR role. So, my remit covers sort of the full employee life cycle.
So, everything from, getting involved with recruiting new staff, the training and development of our staff, how to sort of plan and structure our business for the future and what we want to achieve. And then sort of really looking at the, the HR strategy market.
Brogan: So how did you obviously, I know that you’ve just said that you went into you went to Uni to do business and HR, but how did you really get into your role? So, this one specifically, was it something you applied for or did you just kinda just like fall into it?
Hannah: No. I, sort of my last role again, that was with a building, products manufacturer. And, it wasn’t sort of, I didn’t select that industry for a specific reason at that stage, because I was still quite early in my HR career. It was more the general HR experience that I wanted to get. But once I was in this sector, I realized that this is the sector that I wanted to stay in. And so when I moved into my current position, it was really looking for sort of the next step in my career, but within the similar industry to what I was in previously.
So, it’s really that, you know, construction, building materials. It’s such a wide range of people that you, you get involved with and that we have work in for us within our business. And I really like that variation.
Brogan: Yeah. What do you enjoy the most about working in the sector?
Hannah: Again, I think it’s a variety of people, you know, literally day to day, I can be working with, perhaps one of our area sales managers, one of our drivers, production operatives, finance director, customer service advisors. There’s an absolute full remit and range of people that I work with across the business. And, I think within my role, well, specifically within HR, you get access to the whole range of, departments and you’re involved with everything, which I really enjoy as well.
Brogan: Did you ever think about going into this? I mean, you have kind of covered it, but, like, did you specifically know that you wanted to be within this industry? Like, I know you obviously then said that when you when you started here you realised that this is where you want to be.
Hannah: Yes.
Brogan: Would you stick within that sector? Or would it be something that you would then would you just stick with construction or bounce around sort of?
Hannah: Yeah. I think sort of future wise, I see myself staying within this sector. I think it’s, you know, it’s quite unusual to, to be involved with such a wide variety of people that we are, in our sector. I like that it’s quite fast paced as well. That suits my way of working. That’s something that I sort of particularly enjoy. So yeah, sort of future career wise, no plans to move away from the sector. As I said earlier, you know, it wasn’t when I started my career, it wasn’t a definite, I want to be in the materials, building materials sector. It was sort of by chance that I stumbled across it. But once I got in it quickly, I realized that it was a sector that I enjoyed and something that I wanted to stay in.
Brogan: Yeah. Were you ever hesitant of going into this industry as a woman with it being mainly male dominated?
Hannah: No. I don’t I don’t think I was, hesitant, you know. I think probably going into it, I was quite naive, early at the early stages of my career.
And, you know, I didn’t perhaps realise quite how male orientated it was. I think with working within an HR team as well, they have tended to be quite female orientated. So, you get a bit of the balance really. So, the team that you’re working in tends to be perhaps, you know, more female, whereas the wider business tends to be more male orientated. But with the company that I’m working in now, you know, we’ve got, a high volume of sort of operations-based employees, which do tend to be, male.
Whereas within all the support functions, we’ve got a good split between male and females. So, I don’t think it was sort of ever of hesitation for me that it could be. It wasn’t anything that put me off going into sort of an industry that’s quite renowned for being male orientated.
Brogan: Have you seen the industry change from a woman’s perspective?
Hannah: Yes. I think over I’d probably say over perhaps the last six, seven, eight years, I would say there’s been a notable increase in the amount of women moving into more senior level positions during that time. I would say I’ve noticed there’s a definite shift towards that. And I think I think a lot of companies as well are very conscious that, you know, some of the positions that we recruit for us to say operations we recruit a lot of engineers they do tend to be more male dominant and so I think a lot of companies are proactively now thinking, right, what can we do to attract more women into the into the sector?
Brogan: It’s good, that there. Yeah. This is totally not related to the construction industry in any point. I’m also now just being nosy because when I was younger, I wanted to be a princess and then a forensic scientist. Now I’m in marketing, so I’m neither of people I thought I’d be.
So, the question is, is what did you want to be when you were younger?
Hannah: Well, when I was at school, I wanted to be a PE teacher. Yeah. But then moved away from that when I went to Uni, then I thought I wanted to do marketing, but I did my first few modules and realised marketing wasn’t for me and I really like the people focus ones. I think again because I’d like to know what’s going on and be a bit nosy and get involved with everything. So, I just found the people on suited me.
But, early days, it was a PE teacher. Yeah. And look at all those holidays I’m missing out on.
