If we look back to January 2014, we will see a regular 9-5 office worker from London wanting to change her career. Wendy decided she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in a job she didn’t enjoy, so she looked to the construction industry.
After taking a short course in tiling, to be able to complete her own bathroom, she realised that she really enjoyed it and she also realised she could make money from doing it. This is when Wendy found Able Skills and she booked straight onto an NVQ Level 2 Tiling course and she hasn’t looked back since.
Two years on from her course finishing, Wendy has signed off her NVQ work and is successfully running her tiling business. On her return to Able Skills she praised the ‘pay as you train’ system and she said it really helped her pay for the course in set payments.
Now Wendy has started to gain steady work and she has put a lot of dedication into her work and completing her NVQ. She is now enjoying her new career in the construction industry after ditching her insurance job in the city of London for tiling.
Since gaining her NVQ, Wendy is our first female NVQ student from all the construction trades and the first of many, as many more women are now entering the construction industry.
Wendy is really trying to get more women in the industry and she is trying to encourage them that it is a fantastic career path. Wendy is involved with the organisation, Women on the Tools, and they are trying to make women in the construction industry a normality.
Since starting her work as a Tiler, Women on the Tools have helped Wendy get started and feeling confident working in the industry. She has recently done a promotional video for them to try and encourage women to choose the construction industry as a career.
However, Wendy doesn’t think of it’s odd to be joining the construction industry, she said ‘I just enjoy tiling’ and, of course, she wants an enjoyable career doing something that interests her.
Wendy is the first of many women to complete a construction NVQ at Able Skills
Now she wants to employ more female tilers for her business and help them train up and work for her. She feels that for people that are looking for a career change they don’t have many options to have on the job training.
Wendy hopes to expand her business further and help encourage more women into the construction industry. Also make it a normality for women to work in all the trades without people being surprised by it.
Wendy’s business is called Female Tiler and she is available on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Thanks to our training at Able Skills, Wendy is now able to go out in her new career and start working and earning, also she is helping many other women feel welcomed into the construction industry. We hope that Wendy’s story inspires other women to make a career change and feel confident enough to enter the construction industry.
We would like to finish by wishing Wendy the best of luck for the future and with her new business.