Women in the Trades: Celebrate Your Diverse Workforce!

In broad terms, there is a crit­i­cal hir­ing short­age in the trades. Many of my clients are hold­ing job fairs, mak­ing huge social media pushes/​promotions, offer­ing incen­tives and sign­ing bonus­es, and more, all try­ing to cre­ative­ly draw new hires in their door.

Oth­ers have devel­oped their own train­ing acad­e­mies, putting will­ing team mem­bers on a clear track that leads from gen­er­al laborer/​apprentice to crew leader, often­times with the poten­tial to make a real­ly, real­ly good liv­ing. We’re talk­ing health ben­e­fits, retire­ment, paid time off, etc…

The stig­ma that can go along with work­ing in the trades is being bro­ken down, but a lit­tle too slow­ly (in my opin­ion). Peo­ple need to see that these are AWE­SOME career oppor­tu­ni­ties that offer more sta­bil­i­ty and earn­ing poten­tial than many col­lege grad­u­ates can claim.

If we whit­tle this stig­ma down a bit more, we uncov­er anoth­er unfor­tu­nate stereo­type: trades are pri­mar­i­ly for men. 

This prob­lem is per­pet­u­at­ed by the fact that most home improve­ment hir­ing and social media posts tend to focus heav­i­ly on men doing the work. That makes a lot of sense from a tra­di­tion­al stand­point — the con­struc­tion indus­try has been pre­dom­i­nant­ly a male labor force for centuries. 

But times are changing!

We need to cel­e­brate the trades dif­fer­ent­ly than we have before, and cel­e­brate the fact that more and more women are join­ing the ranks. 

So, What Can YOU Do?

Don’t just show­case your projects on social media — show­case your TEAM. Show all the diverse peo­ple who are work­ing hard in your indus­try, build­ing a fan­tas­tic career and life while gain­ing mar­ketable, in-demand skills. 

Let’s make the trades some­thing to celebrate!