Cliché-free career orientation: Nine girls gain valuable experience at HUBER SE on Girls’ Day

Exciting insights into the fields of wastewater technology, construction, handicraft, mechatronics and IT

The girls from grades six to eight, who came from the region from Breitenbrunn to Freystadt, immersed themselves in the “world of clean water” during the day and learned about the sustainable water cycle. Before the schoolgirls could get a taste of two of the industrial-technical apprenticeships, they were allowed to assemble their own water filter to better understand what the machines produced by HUBER do. In the further course of the day, employees and trainees of the departments made themselves available as guides and showed the girls their workplace and daily tasks for two hours each.

Head of Human Resources Michael Hiller: “Vocational orientation should be free of gender stereotypes”

“Professional orientation should be free of gender stereotypes”, says HUBER’s Head of Human Resources Michael Hiller. “The fact that we are already participating in Girls’ Day for the eleventh time underlines how important this topic is to us at HUBER. It is about saying goodbye to outdated role models and clichés and showing: skills, knowledge, commitment and personality decide who fits into which profession – and not gender. Especially in the industrial-technical sector, for example in construction, crafts, mechatronics and IT, there are generally fewer women working. On Girls’ Day, we want to give girls interesting and exciting insights into precisely these areas and look forward to welcoming them back to HUBER later when they apply for a job.”

At the end of this year's Girls’ Day, the participants met for a feedback session. Annalena Krauser from the HR department presented all apprenticeships and dual study programmes as well as the application process at HUBER before the girls received a certificate of participation as a farewell to the event. All the girls agreed that Girls’ Day was a good opportunity to find out whether an industrial-technical profession might appeal to them.

Girls’ Day aims to offer girls and young women practical experience in professions in which generally fewer women work. The goal: giving young women and girls a new, additional perspective for their professional future. Girls’ Day is the largest career orientation project for schoolgirls worldwide. Since the campaign started in 2001, about 1.9 million girls have taken part, with more than 10,000 offers from companies and organisations in the fields of technology and science so far.