The world has changed since i entered engineering in the 1970s. To be attractive to teenagers today the option of engineering as a career needs to be clearly described as it is now. An 18 yr old girl i know has no interest at all in eng or tech beyond mobile phone and social media.  SChool failed to describe or enthuse her with an eng option. She is not unusual, so much depends on teachers own interests. We need to get interest going. Sort of thing that could inspire is engineers in games software development, or artificial intelligence, or practical hands on say heat pumps, green energy. 

There is also the way of thinking that is at the heart of the profession. I was trained as an elec eng, developed avionics, ran projects, managed sw dept, business development, business change consultancy. I approached all of these as a professional engineer, really using systems engineering ..hard and ,'soft'. However business, marketing, management, change management are not seen as engineering so for much of my career i felt the iet was focused heavily on the early years of a career..not me. Even though I was designing and implementing businesses using sys eng ideas and later business development with a strong sys eng focus on customer needs and so on as well as PM. The point here is that the principles of systems engineering can be widely applied and perhaps we need to find a way to be able to show the variety and scope of work possible in an engineers career..make it interesting, varied, show what it can lead to…Which makes me wonder about the scope of the IET…but most of all there is a selling job needed…to all teens ..on what is in offer in engineering and benefits to them..using todays world examples. Are young engineers hot on social media, of course they are, but i have not seen engineering influencers mentioned with millions of followers.

Longer reply than intended, I'm isolated with covid so had some time to spare.

The world has changed since i entered engineering in the 1970s. To be attractive to teenagers today the option of engineering as a career needs to be clearly described as it is now. An 18 yr old girl i know has no interest at all in eng or tech beyond mobile phone and social media.  SChool failed to describe or enthuse her with an eng option. She is not unusual, so much depends on teachers own interests. We need to get interest going. Sort of thing that could inspire is engineers in games software development, or artificial intelligence, or practical hands on say heat pumps, green energy. 

There is also the way of thinking that is at the heart of the profession. I was trained as an elec eng, developed avionics, ran projects, managed sw dept, business development, business change consultancy. I approached all of these as a professional engineer, really using systems engineering ..hard and ,'soft'. However business, marketing, management, change management are not seen as engineering so for much of my career i felt the iet was focused heavily on the early years of a career..not me. Even though I was designing and implementing businesses using sys eng ideas and later business development with a strong sys eng focus on customer needs and so on as well as PM. The point here is that the principles of systems engineering can be widely applied and perhaps we need to find a way to be able to show the variety and scope of work possible in an engineers career..make it interesting, varied, show what it can lead to…Which makes me wonder about the scope of the IET…but most of all there is a selling job needed…to all teens ..on what is in offer in engineering and benefits to them..using todays world examples. Are young engineers hot on social media, of course they are, but i have not seen engineering influencers mentioned with millions of followers.

Longer reply than intended, I'm isolated with covid so had some time to spare.