All three women are currently reskilling, have completed their nine month software development training course and are now on internship for three months within Jaguar Land Rover, Shannon.
Fiona Gilchrist, (R&D Strategy Lead, Commercial Team), Ritu Johnstone (Project Manager/AGILE RTE), Arifa Khan (Senior Software Developer – Technical Lead), Tanya Flood (Senior Software Developer) and Madhuvanthi Nirmalnath (Software Developer) are participating in the Mentoring programme and are giving their free time to mentor women who have taken a break from their career and the workplace – and are now looking to reskill in tech.
Throughout the project, mentees are given access to key engineers within Jaguar Land Rover who are continuously sharing knowledge on coding skills, products and process that are critical to software engineering and the AGILE way of working. The skills that are being shared with the mentees are critical to working in the Tech and Automotive industry.
The mentees are also being guided on how to prepare for interviews and have been given a non-confidential overview of how software engineering is being used in JLRs products and processes. Garrett Colins, Engineering Manager from the VDC team and Padraig Jones (Software Engineering Manager) have also given up their time to demonstrate the latter. Karen O’Halloran recently provided an overview of the Jaguar Land Rover Graduate programme.
Fiona Gilchrist is hosting the mentees on the project on daily basis and organised for the mentors within Shannon to give up their valuable time to supporting technical aspects and soft skills. The mentees have access to office space on a weekly basis and key engineering personnel which is key to advancing their skills and knowledge for career progression within the Tech Industry.
All of the mentors agree that “this is a fantastic way to give back and, personally, learn different aspects of mentoring”. The project is a huge learning curve for the mentees and really helps build their confidence after such a lengthy career break – as it can be quite overwhelming to go back into the workplace.
