Your 30s are an important time in your life. People tend to settle down, get married, have kids, see promotions at work, and their salaries increase.
You might even decide that this is the time to change careers and try something new. This is exactly what Beca Parker, Mid-Level Developer at Redgate Software, decided to do.
In this episode, she sits down with us to share her career transition, challenges, and triumphs and hear all about her new career at Redgate Software.
hello everyone thank you for tuning in again I am Katie Bateman the content director at chican code and today we’re
talking about retraining as a software engineer in your 30s your 30s are an important time in your life people tend
to settle down get married have kids do promotions at work and their salaries increase you might even decide that this
is the time to change careers and try something new that is exactly what the fabulous Becca Parker mid-level
developer at Redgate software decided to do and I’ve got her here with me today to share her story welcome Becca hi
thanks for having me Kaylee thank you so much for joining us today for our listeners who don’t already know Becca
featured on one of our live webinars recently she discussed her career switch and how and you can find that recording
on chicancode.io but for those who haven’t seen that yet Becca can we kick
off today’s conversation with a little bit of background about yourself and how you got into Tech please yeah sure I
love talking about this because it’s probably the best thing I’ve done in my life so I’m very proud to chat about it
um yeah so I’d had various roles in my previous career before I moved into the tech sector
um and you know I never really stopped to consider myself as someone who could be a software developer I think because
the subjects I studied at school and the opportunities that I gave myself
um up until that point just hadn’t really featured anything to do with coding or any any kind of tech related
um work that is until the pandemic hit so if you’ve heard the webinar already
this is your spoiler alert you’ve heard this bit but during the pandemic when we all started working from home a bit more
obviously and that’s when I got an eye-opener onto what it was like to be a
software developer because my husband is a software developer and you know kind of hanging out at home
together I sort of realized oh that’s what you do all day that’s not at all what I thought it involved so it was a
real um kind of what’s the word spontaneous or serendipitous introduction into what
it would be like day to day to be a software developer um and I sort of from that point I was
able to visualize yeah actually that’s something that I could do and I think I would enjoy doing it
um so once I’d once I’d seen what it actually involved I suddenly you know
started to to visualize that um and so that’s when I took the jump and retrained
um which was a massive commitment I have to say you know those of you that are out there thinking of doing it there’s a
lot to weigh up and I remember going through that process and thinking right is this the right thing to do is this the right time to do it
um but I’m so proud and glad that I did do that because now you know I get paid to do a job that I love doing a job that
you know I I’m learning stuff all the time on a job um
what did you think it was going to be like when when you spoke to your husband but well I suppose what did you think
your husband did before yeah I I had this really strange misconception but I
think it’s quite a shared misconception like people might recognize this this kind of bad stereotype of coders that
sit in the dark room by themselves like hunched over a keyboard and just tapping away all the time by themselves
um or that they’re all kind of I don’t know somehow like child Geniuses and have been coding since there were four
and published their first app and all this kind of stuff when there were from
a very young age and it’s that’s just not the case I don’t know why I thought why I had those misconceptions and I’m
so glad that I was able to have the opportunity to smash them really and
find out what it really involves yeah we hear a lot as well I mean you’re saying about you being a young child there
um a lot of young children they don’t tend to think of tech as a career path for them which is which is a shame and
it’s obviously something that the interest is trying to encourage um what did you want to be when you were younger you can save you can say
princess or whatever you wanted to be I remember the very first thing that I
wrote down in primary school when we had to draw a picture of ourselves of what we thought we would be I remember
drawing a ballerina on a mountain because I really loved being outdoors and climbing and we’ve been on family
holidays climbing in the mountains and things but at that point I was also you know Keen to go to my ballet lessons on
a Wednesday after school or whatever it was so I think I thought I’d be some kind of mountaineering ballerina and but
then more seriously when it came time to pick you know GCSE subjects and
um a-levels and things like that I was very much focused on languages I really enjoyed French and Spanish at school and
I was lucky enough to go and do those at University as well um but having chosen that quite early on
meant that I’d narrowed down well at the time when I was at school I don’t if it’s different now but
you know you really had to kind of narrow down fairly early on so by the time I was 16 17 I’d already you know
stopped doing um any stem subjects really um and so I think that’s what that’s
what gave me this false idea that oh because I’ve haven’t pursued that in an academic sense I haven’t got any
um academic qualifications in those subjects past you know beyond you know what what everyone had to do at that age
we all had to do maths GCSE and math science um yeah I just I thought oh I I can’t
become a coder so I never really thought about it you you have to choose you almost choose your career path so early
um and yeah nobody has come in to chat you about certain careers then you know
you kind of take what you’ve seen and that’s it isn’t it and that’s not always the tech industry
um but I think that’s changing more and more and for the better that people are getting more exposure to the different
options that are out there secondary school kids I think have a lot more options than perhaps I did when I went to secondary
school um but yeah just being able to say somebody well it doesn’t matter if you
don’t have a degree in that it you know in a technical subject you can still break into tech industry
um I think that’s quite a powerful message yes definitely and obviously you retraining later in life what what kind
of barriers and challenges did you find retraining there must have been quite unique challenges for you doing that a
little bit later in life yeah so by that point obviously um
I was it was in my 30s as I said I’ve done I had done various other roles so I
kind of had a lot of work experience real life experience behind me but I
didn’t have I knew I didn’t have the technical qualifications or how would I show an employer that I’ve got enough
for them to you know to take me on in a technical role
um so I spent a lot of time figuring out what would be the right course for me to do so having you know parental
responsibilities my my son was 9 10 at the time so
I didn’t want to have to commute down to London every day because you know I think there’s a lot there’s a lot of
opportunities in in big centers big big city centers isn’t there where people can do face-to-face courses particularly
in London there’s various opportunities which is great if you live in London if you don’t live in London and you can’t
you know commit two hours of your day to commute down every day because you’ve got you know someone at home who’s
waiting who needs to need you there after school time and stuff um but luckily the course that I was
accepted onto the makers Academy boot camp at that point they had lots of remote options I think that’s thanks to
the pandemic really and so just explore exploring what’s out there and realizing
that there was a viable option I don’t think I could have done it if it was an in-person course personally because of
because of the commitments I had at home so you know knowing that there’s options
out there you just need to do a bit of research and find which one’s going to fit in with your fitting with your other
responsibilities um yeah it’s worth doing the research and finding out about the different
options that are out there yeah it must be quite intense as well I know some courses
um you know if you have to go face to face for a um for your training I mean
there’s things like travel when paying for travel yeah you know all of that is you have to pay for that it’s such a
commitment on top of your boot camp and you know if you’re not getting paid whereas at work you commute during the
month because you’re not going to get paid at the end of the month but when you’re just yeah you’re thinking gosh I’ve got to pay all this money to get to
London for something and you’re not quite sure you know whether something will will come out at the end of it um
so it says added expenses isn’t it but um can be a bit of a gamble I think for
a lot of people you know you’ve weighing up well can I can I afford to do this at this time
um I was lucky enough that um you know we had we had some money put by so I could cover the fees for the
boot camp um so I think there are other options out there I know there’s apprenticeships and
there are part-time options as well so I think it’s just a question of finding something that works for you and don’t
give up till you find something that will work for you I think a lot of places as well that offer these uh
retraining courses do have schemes specifically aimed at you know increasing the diversity of of the
people that access the course you don’t get unless you ask so you know you have to you have to say excuse me do you have
anything available to help someone in my situation who have I have these responsibilities I really want to to do
this but actually this barrier is stopping me from doing it so you know you never know they might turn around and say Well turns out we have a
scholarship for you know someone of your background or um you know we don’t but we know someone
who is offering an apprenticeship or you know a part-time option that might be more viable for you so yeah there are
barriers but there’s lots of ways to overcome them exactly yeah and you mentioned that you started
um you know you started from scratch and that you you didn’t um uh have the quality any qualifications before did you have any
technical knowledge before though had you given anything a go had you given a project to go had you had your husband
sent you a challenge I’m glad you tried anything yeah um so before before I um seriously
looked into retraining no I hadn’t really I had very little technical knowledge I knew how to use Excel and
make it do a few whizzy things like I could do a pivot table or something um but other than that no I wouldn’t
have I I had never written a line of code when I thought actually I could be
a coder I hadn’t written a line of code at that point but it sounds a bit crazy when you look back on it
um but then as you mentioned like you know because I knew someone who was in the tech industry my husband in this
case but you know having someone who’s in the tech industry or who wants to
share their passion with you about it could be really powerful because they can say well here’s a really small
encapsulated bit of project that you could do in half an hour or an hour and
see a result and it’s it’s really um very eye-opening and um you feel a
sense of achievement when you can see the you know your first bit of code compiling and doing the thing that
you’ve asked it to do um and there’s loads of opportunities out there to do it lots of mentorship
programs um I’ll try to think of some of the names on the top of my head but there’s
code first girl says women who code
um and just really supportive places that you can go and say hey I’ve never tried this I’m a complete beginner
what should I start with and you’ll find that you know everybody’s actually really friendly there’s they’re not
trying to Elbow you out and say no no there’s you know this isn’t for you they want you to have a go so yeah use those
opportunities as well yeah because I suppose um and you said you’re lucky enough you know your
husband was in it and you kind of did share that passion but it’s about building that network isn’t it if you
haven’t got that um then like you said reaching out to other communities that are doing the same thing
um maybe you know they we run hackathons and the hackathons that the ladies that
um come they’ve never been to a hack form before in their life and we love that it’s like they’ve just turned up
for the day and they want to try something new um in a safe environment uh where they feel like they they can they can do that
like did you attend any hackathons or or were they meetups or anything like that where you got to expand your network
kind of face to face occasionally do you know what not until I started my boot camp and even then not face to face yeah
I think but that was partly because of the pandemic at the time that was limiting the options no I think that would have been a great thing to do
before I embarked on it um yeah because like you said you can spark off each other and I think
definitely having an attitude you’re just saying well what’s the worst that can happen if I turn up and it’s I don’t
know an hour session in the evening what how long are your hackathons that you’re on uh we ran them they’re in all day so
they go from nine until six ish so any more groups with other people that feel the same way as you and by the end of
the day you can see that they’re amazed that they’ve spent the day building something you know
yeah exactly so what’s the worst that can happen you lose a day of your life
but what’s the best that can happen you get a big sense of achievement that you can do it you know you get to meet make
build that network of other people who can mentor you through the rest of the process of you know retraining I think
that the mentorship and the network of other people who are either in the same boat or recently been in the same boat
as you is really really useful because you don’t have to pretend you know you
can you can say exactly what you want to say and they’ll understand um and everybody’s there to be supportive and you do get that with
um well I certainly got it with the boot camp that I did I’m still in contact with um lots of the
alumni like people who’ve completed that boot camp but also people who’ve who
were thinking about doing it have contacted me on LinkedIn or you know through through other networks and said
oh I’ve seen you’ve done this boot camp can you tell me a bit more about what it involved for you or um would you
recommend it what kind of what can I expect that kind of thing and um yeah
this this one in particular person who sticks in my mind do she contacted me just before she was thinking of doing it
and we had to get chat about what what to expect and so on um and then time flies doesn’t it so
then it was within you know a blink of an eye it felt like she’d finished her her um boot camp because that they’re
only like 12 weeks long or so around about 12 weeks long
and she finished and she got back in contact and said oh I’ve just finished it and I remember we chatted beforehand and
um I’m thinking about applying for this job and what do you what would you recommend and so on and it’s really it’s
really nice to see you know how much he’d grown through the process of doing the boot camp and we got together and
paired on zoom on a like a c-sharp um Qatar because she hadn’t done
although she’d done the boot camp she had done in it C sharp and that was one of the languages that she was thinking
about working with and it was just like yes I remember that you know when you just finished that
boot camp and you’re like what world’s my oyster now um yeah that’s amazing yeah it’s nice to
keep in touch with with people like that yeah and to to share as well after the
boot camp where you go what you do and how you feel because you know I was
speaking to a lady recently on here who said um she retrained and then she went into work
um but she actually joined as a junior because she tried something new and but she’s been in work for years so you know
how how did that feel for you what was that like you know starting feeling like you’re starting from the bottom again
but actually you’ve been in work for for he was very experienced in the world of work at that point
yeah that’s the thing about retraining in your you know in your 30s or later isn’t it that you’ve probably got you
know some work workplace know-how behind you you’re not straight straight out of uni or straight out of school
um so it can be a bit um weird awkward I guess but actually
it’s a kind of a secret superpower if you join as a junior so I I joined Redgate as a junior engineer and
um you can use it your advantage because you you can say look you know I’m a junior could you just take a step back
and explain that to me whereas if you go in as a you know as a mid-level or something else
you might feel that imposter syndrome kicking in saying oh I shouldn’t be asking that because I ought to know this
but you can use your your status as like you know I’ve I’ve just arrived I’m new to this to your benefit and actually the
team when I’ve shared that with my my work team and they said yeah but we really appreciate when you stop and ask us
these questions because it means that we have to explain it to you so we get to
understand the process a bit more in depth we also hear the other the other members of the team their explanation of
it so you get a deeper understanding of it from that sense you know you see different sides of the same coin
um you know and sometimes it helped them to stop and think oh actually why are we doing it like this we don’t there’s some
there’s probably a newer technology that can do this in a you know in a better way or something so yeah they’re not
being as clear as they probably could be yeah and as a fresh pair of eyes you would you would notice that and it’s
okay that you’re asking I mean it’s always okay to ask questions that work but if you want to ask a thousand questions you can because you’re curious
and my team was super supportive because um yeah because they knew that they knew
the route that I’d taken I think it’s just good to be yourself at work and be upfront and say you know I’ve done this
recently um I’ve made this big change um because people are supportive and if
they’re not you know then that’s on them yes yeah and I think you’re in the wrong
team then I think you would quickly yeah like a wrong company in the ring in the wrong team if you’ve just suddenly
realize nobody here is supportive no exactly I think red Gators in particular
are I’ve I’ve found every red Gator that I’ve worked with to be really supportive so and there is no such thing as a silly
question you know and you’ve got to be brave and remember that for yourself because you can you can hear that little
voice in your own head saying oh if you ask that you’re gonna look really dumb but that’s just not true it’s just not
true you know and sometimes even if you don’t feel confident enough to interrupt the flow of the meeting or whatever and
ask it there and then you know just pinning it somewhere writing yourself a quick note and then sending somebody a
side message on slack or whatever and just say oh you know you mentioned such and such a thing or you said we can use
such and such a approach can you tell me a bit more about that because I haven’t encountered that yet you know it’s not
it’s not at all um it’s it’s not at all a disadvantage I
think it’s actually a secret superpower to go in as a as a junior and have that as a junior though you must have noticed
that there are transferable skills that you have brought across from previous
workplaces is there anything that you’ve that has really stood out for you that you think actually it’s not just the
technical skills that somebody would need it’s it’s the soft skills and everything else that comes with just
surviving in the world of work I suppose oh I love that you’ve asked that question we touched on it a bit in that
webinar that we recorded didn’t we um but yeah I’ll have the opportunity to dig into the unpack those a bit further
so in the webinar I think I mentioned my top three and I snuck in a sneaky fourth one so we’ll go through them so
collaborating is a top skill because and that was the main thing and when were
mentioned that eye-opening experience of what it actually is like to be a coder and it’s not just you in a room on your
own tapping away you know um fulfilling tickets and fixing bugs
all by yourself it’s absolutely not like that especially um companies that work you know in with
team-based development like we do a lot of Redgate so all of the code that we write is either paired on so two
programmers working on it together or mob programs so groups of programmers up
to four or five I would say depend depends on the task um and we’re just working on it all
together you know one person’s doing the typing and we rotate who’s doing the typing but everybody’s contributing and
kind of picking apart what we’ve got to do and suggesting different approaches that we could take so there’s a lot of
collaborative work in programming um definitely so having the ability to
kind of ask clarifying questions of your team or include perhaps the quieter
members of the team to see what they’re thinking drawing drawing from all those sources of information that are there in
the team those are really important skills that you can bring from other roles that you may have done in the past
um and then moving on to the second one so the second um top transferable skill I would say is
being able to think in systems um and what I mean what I mean by that
is kind of breaking a problem down into smaller repeatable chunks so that you
can if if you’re a coder you can write a block of code that does that and you can reuse it
um but then it also helps when you’ve got to kind of structure structure the project that you’re
working on um in terms of which blocks of code are going to interact with each other and
how so designing the interfaces and the apis between the the components that
you’re writing I’m trying I’m struggling because I often talk with C sharp terminology but actually it’s wider than
that you know this but those Concepts I think transfer to any kind of especially object orientated language
um so those are really that’s kind of like the system thinking side of it I would say definitely if you’ve ever done
any kind of project management or been involved in any project or process
in a previous role where you’ve had to kind of think about the most efficient way to do it or who’s the best person to
do this role um or how can I get this done smart rather than you know having to do
lots of laborious manual tasks a lot that those kinds of skills will
transfer to um coding or even um designing for coding as well
so those that’s those two the third one I mentioned in the webinar which is a really I wouldn’t call it a skill
necessarily it’s more of an Outlook is having that growth mindset so being open
to the idea that you’re always going to be learning something new and that’s so true in Tech because the technology is
always moving right so even if you think you you know you’re right up to date and you’ve you’ve got it all under your belt
you haven’t because it’s all moving so fast anyway um and personally that’s something that
I really enjoy and that’s one of the reasons that I did get into Tech is that I knew there’d always be something new
to learn um and just kind of remembering that if it’s new for you it’s going to be new
for someone else on the team as well so you don’t have to feel um you know like just because you’re a
junior and you’ve got less experience than the other people on your team you don’t have to feel like oh
there’s so much to learn and I don’t know this thing that’s now coming along so I think it could feel quite
overwhelming but if you just shift that mindset and think you know all these new things I can learn and all these new
things that my colleagues are learning alongside me that’s a great mindset to
have um yeah one of the kind of mantras that they taught us in the boot camp was it’s
not hard it’s new I think it can feel quite overwhelming
to think wow there’s so much to learn and I don’t get it like it’s it
doesn’t sink in the first time you do it you need to do it several times before you really understand it I was talking
to my tech lead um yesterday about some uh videos and learning that
I’ve been doing and he was saying to me so how you know what did you get from it and I said well I’ve got this level of
um info from it but I think I’m gonna have to re-watch it again in a few months time because it’s like watching
Toy Story you know you can watch it as a child and there’s one plot going on but then when you re-watch it as an adult
you know a bit more it’s a whole different story so um yeah
there’s that level of deep revisiting stuff and you’ll get a new appreciation
for what you had got from it before I think you you’re absolutely right it’s
it must be incredibly overwhelming but also people just must feel like they’re they’re going to be a disadvantage
because they you know they’re starting something new but and and you’re
starting it you know a little bit later in life but actually you’re it’s such an advantage for having all of that
experience behind you and as you said all of those transferable skills that probably a lot of people haven’t even
realized they soaked up yeah anyway along the way and you’re definitely not at a disadvantaged there
um in in trying something new um you mentioned uh a few a few little
um bits there about how you work um at Redgate can you tell us a little bit about the most interesting projects
you’ve worked on so far yeah sure so I think it’s probably
actually the project that we’re working on currently so it is very exciting I’m
not really sure how much of it I’m allowed to share but basically we’ve we Redgate make database tools right so we
make tools that help people who work with databases day in day out to do
their job more effectively or to automate essentially a lot of the processes that they do so that they’re
freed up to do more important um things with their database that only a human can do
um so typically I think you know people that end up using our products the end users are dbas their database
administrators in big Enterprises Redgate has historically been a SQL Server
um tall shop so we historically we’ve made tools that work with SQL Server
databases but the world’s shifting and you know more and more Enterprise are using
different database environments so postgres and MySQL Etc
and I’ve got a really exciting job on our team at the moment of making the capabilities that that Redgate already
has and the tools that we already have work across different database environments and it’s just really it’s
something that we’ve really been able to get our teeth into as well because as a coding problem
it’s just it’s really interesting because you have to build the components to do the tasks need to be able to have
versions versions of those components that will be compatible with these other database environments and it’s just
really neat to see how the architectures like slotting together so
um so that the the tooling can be database agnostic and work across all these different database types
um yeah gosh yeah if you’ve asked me you know like even five years ago if I’d be saying that kind of sentence to you
what’s the most interesting project you’ve worked on and that would have been my reply I wouldn’t have yeah I
wouldn’t have imagined that yeah I I was just going to ask you that dude do you think a few years ago that you’d be you
know talking to me about database environments and you know suddenly no probably not yeah but here we are had
the opportunity last year to go to the Past data Community Conference in Seattle which reduced heavily involved
with and that’s really cool as well because the people that go to those conferences are really into the thing
the thing that we do and there are users typically or sometimes they’re not yet
our users you know you can talk to them about the products and they go what I didn’t know that your product could do that
um so it’s really exciting to go to those kinds of things and interact with interact with them because it makes it
all worthwhile as well you know to see them getting excited about it as well because they’re our end user yes yeah
and it sounds like your day is incredibly varied and creative actually and you just threw in there that there’s
travel you know I don’t think a lot of people know all of that do they unless you work in it you kind of yeah I think
it’s going to be quite boring and dry um but nothing that you just described there sounded boring and dry
no it’s definitely not boring every day is a little bit different yeah
and in terms of advice for our listeners um that are thinking about retraining is
there anything that you wish someone had told you before you retrained yeah it’s quite cliched but I would say
I wish someone had told me earlier you’re good enough and you can do that
um I think it really helped that I had someone who believed believed in me and believed that I could do it so just
because of the circumstance because my husband was already a software developer
and he knew me really well he was able to say and it’s and he knew the role
really well he was able to say this is these are the kind of problems that you like to get your teeth into it’s just
you don’t know that yet it’s you know he’s seen how I like what things I enjoy and what things bring a sparkle to me
and you know he was able to persuade me that I would be able you know you’re going to
be good at this and you’re going to enjoy it um so I think I feel I feel like there’s probably
thousands of people out there who haven’t had someone to say you can’t do this actually and you will enjoy doing
it um yes it’s just finding that as we said earlier whether or not if you don’t have
that at home just reaching out because the the women in Tech Community in particular is very supportive of you
know newcomers and people that want to retrain um so I suppose it’s just reaching out to the right people isn’t it not the
lady you reached out to you and asked you about your boot camp um it’s just making that first connection I suppose and and going from
there yeah definitely and if you haven’t got someone you know personally yeah go
out and look for that person and say you know this I’m thinking about doing this um what should I know before I start and
people do want to help you you know that there’s lots of support out there and so we’re nearly out of time so I’m going to
ask you one last question and but we we all know that the tech industry has sorted off women what more can be done
to encourage the female Talent pipeline yeah that’s such a tricky question I
think there’s um you know there’s there’s lots of advice out there for Tech recruitment in terms
of really analyzing each step of the recruitment Pipeline and thinking about
right from the right from the job advert is there something in this advert that is subconsciously putting women off from
applying for this particular job um there are tools that you can use I believe to analyze the wording of your
job adverts and the wording of you know the content that you’re putting out there yeah
um but I think even after that stage you know just making sure that you’re not accidentally filtering out the diversity
right you know just by the words that you’ve chosen in the job advert um so that’s something you notice when
you were looking for jobs where there’s somewhere you thought well no no way that’s what I did and I don’t think I’d want to work there
so yes and no I think sometimes you might
not realize that the wording has put you off as made you close that job application before you even finish reading it yeah so it’s they probably
have been adverts that I’ve just kind of thought no I don’t I don’t think I can apply for that or that doesn’t look like
the role for me but on the other hand I think just from a pragmatic level
I’ve got a hunch that if there were more part-time roles available or or if companies were willing to say on the job
adverts you know this this role is we would consider applicants who want you
know a part-time role or a full-time role just be a bit more open to that kind of thing because already in the
tech industry there’s actually really great um flexibility in terms of remote working
um flexi time and all of those things can be a really great benefit in terms of
attracting um you know female Talent like well and
male Talent as well you know so let’s let’s just let’s put that out there it’s not just women that want flexible
working but I think it can help um if you find that you’re not
attracting females to the role just addressing those kinds of things
um yeah and then even you know through once you’ve got through the door and you’ve got an application in with that company you’ve then got to get through
the recruitment process as well and if there’s a lot of unconscious bias in that filtering then you know that
company might find that they’re selecting for the wrong reasons you know and that’s going to live it their their
talent pool isn’t it so there’s a lot that companies can do to address the talent that they’re attracting
personally I think it’s a bit lazy when companies say oh but there aren’t actually enough women for us to recruit
that’s why we’ve got you know that’s why our diversity is low yeah I think okay
that is that is part of the challenge that they face is that there may be more
um you know more males out there who are applicable to you know to apply for the roles but
you know most most technical roles if you think a bit out of the box in terms of how you can recruit for it
and just making sure that you’re not limiting the people who can apply for that role for the role reasons so if
you’re limiting for the right reasons obviously you know you need to be selecting for excellence and talent and
Technical expertise and whatnot but if you’re also limiting for the wrong reasons then you’re only ever going to
end up recruiting the same type of person and that’s when you’ll find I think that the diversity and your talent
pool is gonna decrease um but then in terms of Grassroots I
think things are improving aren’t they like you know there are more opportunities and people are away awake
to the fact that you know you can’t just um it’s not just a job for the boys and you can’t just let
um one type of person get all the way through the pipeline of you know training and getting the experience and
then getting a job so I think things are improving and organizations like like she can coach
and all the support networks that are out there can only help I think yeah
yes I definitely agree things things are things are moving um there is still a long way together I
agree there there is um definitely a lot of support out there now and then then they used to be and thank you so much by
Rebecca we’re already out of time and thank you so much for talking to us today and sharing your story it’s been a
pleasure um and to everybody listening as always thanks for joining us and we hope to see you again next time
