Ya's story

I grew up in a society where technical education was a male-dominated area. My resilience and passion for this industry were my motivation. My mum is my greatest source of inspiration for funding my education and supporting me to pursue my unconventional career path. But I must acknowledge a lot of people have contributed to my success.

A few months after graduating from my Masters, there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which made finding a job very difficult. After two years of looking, I felt like giving up and was thinking I’d never get a job. People were telling me that they had heard of people of colour like me struggling to get jobs. Initially I didn’t want to believe this. If we attend the same universities, study the same courses and sometimes we do even better because we had to work harder than the average person, it doesn’t make any sense. When I look back, I think it was a case of not being able to express or communicate my skills effectively.

I attended a jobs fair organised by Fair Start Scotland, aimed at helping people on Universal Credit to access employment. Someone gave me a flyer advertising admin jobs that didn’t really match my technical skills, but I didn’t mind because I just wanted to work. At the same time, a friend had been helping me to improve my CV and apply for jobs as an engineer. Thanks to his help, I soon had three interviews lined up, the first one of which resulted in a job offer for the company where I work now.

When I was offered the job, they asked me when I could start. I told them in a month’s time so that I would have time to organise childcare. I was referred to OPFS Edinburgh’s childcare connector service for help finding childcare. The childcare connector, Kalina, was able to help me secure a nursery place for one of my children. In order take up this place, however, I needed to pay upfront nursery fees. Kalina contacted the Job Centre so I could access support from the Flexible Support Fund. Unfortunately, I was told they couldn’t help me because Fair Start Scotland already had a budget allocated to them, connected to the Flexible Support Fund and that would mean double funding. With Kalina’s help, I tried several times to access support to cover childcare costs through Fair Start Scotland, but we never heard back from them.  It caused a lot of stress as I was due to start my new job in only 10 days and I still had no childcare funds in place.

It was looking like I’d have to pay the upfront childcare costs out of my own pocket in order to secure the nursery place and start my job on time. The invoice from the nursery was £1,100 because they were charging from the date the space has been made available to my son, despite the fact that he would in fact only be starting one week before the end of that month. Thanks to Kalina, I was able to access a one-off grant to cover the £1,100 nursery fees. However, I also had to pay upfront for the next month’s fees, and at that stage it wasn’t possible to claim childcare support from Universal Credit upfront. That meant I had to pay these fees out of my own living costs from Universal Credit and put myself into debt just so I could take up the new position.

My friends and family were happy for me, I didn’t feel I could tell them about my money worries. This shouldn’t happen to anyone. Here I was, doing everything I could to feed my children and make a living, but I had no money, I had nothing to eat. What should have been an exciting new chapter turned out to be the worst three months of my life.

It would actually have been easier for me at that point to turn down the job and avoid having to cover childcare costs, but engineering is something I feel passionately about. In my company, I’m making a positive contribution to reducing carbon emissions. I play a key role working on projects of which 85% are geared towards decarbonisation. Since I started in my role, I’ve been approached by several employers and recruitment agencies offering me positions. But I just want to stay here because the company offers me the freedom to grow, and I can work flexibly – it’s a very supportive environment.

In my company, we desperately need more people like me if we want to help fulfil Scotland’s ambitions to reach Net Zero. How can this happen, though, when there is a huge gap in support? I feel hugely let down by the system, by the Job Centre. There are many other engineering graduates who like me who are highly qualified, they have the best grades and yet they’re not getting access to work in their field just because of a lack of support. We need ask why is that? More effort needs to be made to break down barriers in terms of diversity and inclusion.

As a single parent, it was of course challenging. However, I focused on my dream – a dream of ultimately becoming an engineer, a role model and an inspiration to others. I am proud to be part of a thriving career whilst working with like-minded professionals whom I can learn from. I am settling into my job really well. Finding myself in a role where I can use my skills to make a positive impact on the environment makes all my struggles worthwhile.