In this episode we speak with Sarah Noble, Head of Early Engagement at the RICS.
Sarah head’s up the drive to make kids aware of and engaged with the different routes into surveying. It’s a tough role creating awareness of a hidden profession that doesn’t have the same immediate awareness as building trades or professions such as engineering, law and medicine. View on Zencastr
View on Zencastr
We discuss:
✅ What is early engagement
✅ The challenge of surveying being a hidden profession
✅ How to engage younger people with surveying roles
✅ Planning which pathways to promote based on expected future demand
✅ Measuring the impact of early engagement programmes
✅ Building relationships with organisations and teachers to help increase engagement
✅ How parents perceptions of surveying affect children’s choices
How you can work with RICS to help promote the profession
Everyone can help to engage kids with surveying and each engagement, no matter how small, contributes to a big impact overall for the number of people pursuing a role on the profession.
Have you considered how you can help engage people at school level about what you do?
Speak to Sarah today to find out more
Transcript
The following transcript is autogenerated.
Matt Nally 00:14
On this week’s episode, we have Sarah noble, who is the head of early engagement and enrolment at the RICS. So thank you for coming on.
Sarah Noble 00:37
Thank you for having me.
Matt Nally 00:38
The only time I’d left this thing is gonna be really interesting episode to cover sort of, you know, what you do and what, you know, but bringing people into the profession, but it’d be great if you could start off just by I suppose, introducing who you are and what you do at the RICS. Yes.
Sarah Noble 00:54
So my name is Sarah. And I’ve been in the RICS since May of last year. So my previous role was actually teaching of the French and Spanish teacher. But it also works as a careers leader. But prior to that had worked in industry. So I’ve worked in industry got into teaching left teaching at the RICS. So I guess the link there is working with young people and ensuring they get the next best step. So yeah, I started in May I oversee the early engagement and enrolment team, those two teams are the first part of the membership journey. So early engagement. I’ll go through the team in a minute, but that team goes into schools, and colleges that offer T levels and level three apprenticeships, going to universities and other providers that provide a level six apprenticeships and degrees. And then globally, we go into schools, and they were leased, and we’re going to universities in APAC and EMEA. And the idea is that we are raising awareness of RICS we’re raising awareness of surveying, in fact, there are 22 different pathways that could be building control. It could be planning, there are so many different niches as well, you know. So yeah, it’s about getting young people. First of all, from school into the right air levels from the right A levels or T levels into the right level six qualification, and hopefully then on to becoming an RICS member and enjoying the job for life.
Matt Nally 02:19
Awesome. There’s, there’s, there’s a lot of aspects that I want to delve into, but what they’re really interested in what took you from? I see the link, obviously, but what’s it you from teaching into the RFCs.
Sarah Noble 02:29
Um, so I had been teaching only for 17 years and starts when I was 30. So it was a bit of a career change. And I did, I absolutely loved it. And I love working with young people. But I’ll be quite candid with you. I was working from seven o’clock in the morning at 10 o’clock at night, and throughout the holidays, and I just wasn’t enjoying it anymore. And the RSCs position gave me a chance to still work with young people, and still work with getting those young people into their ideal job in a job that they could thrive, I guess without the marketing, the phone calls and the planning. So I’ve got more of a life balance.
Matt Nally 03:08
Yeah, I get that. I get that. Because it’s a I’ve got some friends that are teachers. And yes, I take the mick out of them for their very long summer holidays. But I do I do see actually day to day, they do work some very, very long hours, you know, planning and marking? And yeah, so it’s an intense one for
Sarah Noble 03:26
sure. But I still get the best of it because I still get to go into schools and present to children and I haven’t gotten like their books. And we still do. We do visits for young people to our offices in Birmingham and in London and Edinburgh. So we get cohorts of students come in. So I still I get the best of both
Matt Nally 03:42
worlds. Really? Yeah, yeah. That’s brilliant. So I suppose for context of the early engagement, I suppose how early does early engagement start? I’m imagining it’s not, you know, reception ages more secondary school, or is that completely wrong?
Sarah Noble 03:55
No. Well, I would love it to be reception in primary school. We are a very small team. So you’ve got to work with a resource you’ve got. So there’s me head off. We’ve got a manager, we’ve got a school coordinator, a university coordinator and an admin person in the UK. So we sat down or I sat down with John icsem main thought, right? How can we capitalise on that? The small results we’ve got. And there isn’t a budget we don’t shoestring we use goodwill. So it made sense for me having come out of the school situation having come out of education. I’ve worked with middle school, I’ve worked with high school, and I just kids are lovely, but their space cadet, and they don’t really need to start thinking about their future until they’re in year 10 or 11. So in old money that would be fourth form of the form so 1516 onwards, so I decided to use a minimal resource we’ve got really well so we go into year 10 Zero elevens year 12 to 13 start with 13 to being sick form or we talked to the intensive elevens about their A levels or two levels. And then we talked to these sick forms about about the level six apprenticeships or the degree programmes. It just means that we can talk to these young people about their next step. And we can guide them. So for example, if you’ve got sick form of the what to do on level six, we can help them write the UCaaS application, or help them write their apprenticeship application, it just is a bit more tangible. Whereas, and I’ve done things with year five, and year sevens, you can have a really great session on surveying, and you can get them to redesign a high street, and have some good fun with them. But they’re not going to leave that classroom and do something meaningful with that information. So it’s about return on investment as well, when it comes down to it.
Matt Nally 05:32
I think it’s a really tough, tough road, because I remember, there was a little while ago now, but I do remember at school going through, you know, careers advice and stuff. And I remember everyone kind of getting the similar response. And I was at a software programme, where to go on and it get spat out a response at the end being like, You should do this. And I think all of us have a class of 30. And we seem to have covered about three job roles between 30 of us, you know, and there’s nothing wrong with a job roles. But obviously, three roles weren’t gonna suit 30 different people. And even now, there’s roles I hear about in different industries that you never know about. And of course, you can’t educate people on everything. But what are the what are the type of reactions you get from from people, when you speak to them about it, they that many never heard of it before?
Sarah Noble 06:18
This is the issue. This is a problem. And so, I mean, I probably didn’t know much about surveying until I started working in RICS, you know, bought houses, sold houses and encountered today’s doing level two level three surveys, but that was about it. And most people think of an estate agent. Well, I mean, there’s 22 different pathways. So the problem we face is it’s very much a hidden profession. So if you say to a child, what do you want to do? If you get someone that wants to work in the built environment, they’re thinking about like brick layers, roofers, electricians, plumbers, are architects, but they will never say, oh, surveying sounds great. So moms and dads don’t know about it, teachers don’t know about it, the kids don’t know about it. So one of our biggest challenges is because because it’s the teachers advising the young people, if a teacher isn’t aware of a profession, they can’t advise that young person. The problem with teaching is, honestly, it’s so stressful, your head is down, and you are literally focused on hitting target. Great. So you know, your line manager saying to you, I need x number students to get an A or A, B, or C, that’s your focus, you’re not really worried about the jobs your children can do after you’re worried about your exam. Great. So it’s about educators influence, as we call them. So at the RSCs, we have been running some influence sessions. So we hold them in the evening, we invite teachers, parent, parents, carers, we tell the adults all about the profession, hoping that they’re going to go way back into the classroom and talk to the young people about it. So yeah, they’re just kids just don’t know about it. So they’re often they’re in awe. And they take less for granted the buildings they live in learning, working. So I try and say to kids, next time you walk down the street, try looking up, you know, put your phone away. Look at the buildings be exactly that built environment. A surveyor has had a hand in every part of that build cycle.
Matt Nally 08:06
It’s an interesting point actually about looking up because this this is a device that I remember getting when I worked in retail years ago. It food retail, and the inspection if you’re on store to have to have a look with your team, and so on. And the one bit everybody forgot to do was look up, you’ll always be looking at what’s things books on the floor, what’s on the shelf, but you’ve never noticed what was broken bulbs or you know, stuff that’s great somewhere. But it doesn’t relate to the so much you miss out if you don’t miss out on if you don’t.
Sarah Noble 08:35
Yeah, and just take for granted, you know, buildings of study. So yeah, headquarters, for example. It’s a beautiful building. And you walk past it. Well, in every city, there are beautiful buildings, but you just take them for granted. They’ve always stood there and they always will.
Matt Nally 08:51
Yeah, yeah. I think one thing I’d like to touch on is, so I was going to actually ask you about the influence or aspect in terms of do run training with the teacher because obviously they can then pass that message on to more people. But is it difficult to get the message across when there’s 22 pathways? I mean, I know obviously, that there has to be because there’s the built environment covers a lot of areas, but it’s so hard to then convey that
Sarah Noble 09:15
it is and what we tend to do because we’re delivering our programme on a shoestring we tend to rely on our RSCs members to be our ambassadors to go into schools. So you can only really promote the pathway or the profession of that Ambassador. So for example, if I’ve got a quantity surveyor going into school, he or she is going to talk about quantity surveying and likewise Building Surveying. So we tend to get the most popular pathways which is the resi pathway Q SBS, possibly geomatics and land surveyor not so much. Recently, we’ve had a minerals conference so we’ve got lots of minerals and waste today is coming forward and saying they’d like to come in. What we really need to do is focus on where the gaps in the labour market are. So for example, HS two is behind schedule, partly because of budget but also partly because they haven’t had enough quantity surveyors to employ on the initiative. So what we need to do is when we haven’t really is we need to go away really scrutinise that labour market information, find out where the gaps are start saying to young people, what we desperate for our 10,000 Quantity Surveyors or, or 150 land surveyors. And that’s something we’re not doing. It’s a bit ad hoc, and we need to be a little bit more strategic about that.
Matt Nally 10:23
Yeah. And that’s, that’s I imagined quite, I use the word interesting, largely, but it’s an interesting one to go into in terms of there is a big lag between obviously speaking to people at school or going through GCSEs A levels, etc. And then finally, coming into the job market could be eight years. Yeah. So it’s, it’s interesting, an interesting one to plan. And then sort of to see what what the effects were and I suppose it’s, is it difficult to see what the effects are? Quite immediately in terms of what you do? Because it’s because of there’s there’s that lag? Or do you start to see changes in what sort of types of applications people are going for early on in the brain
Sarah Noble 10:58
when dealing with the level six, when we were working with our apprentices and our students on the RSCs accredited degree programmes, we can see straightaway the impact, so why not straightaway. So I’ve only started in may say this is the first academic year. But the attrition between students leaving the RICS accredited apprenticeship or, or degree course and going into employment and becoming chartered is huge. So our aim, first and foremost is to ensure that more people come off these courses and apprenticeships, find a job and then go through the AAPC to be charted that’s so that we should see pretty quickly, we should see those numbers going up due to the engagement we’re doing. In terms of scores, that’s going to take a long time. So what we are doing is all of the scores that we’ve seen this academic year, so from September 22, to July 23, we are going to maintain contact with those schools, we’re going to go back in next year, the year after year after those schools will be the well we hopefully will be the RSCs talent pipeline. Because we’re on friendly terms with the schools. And it really does, hopefully that really does, we’ll start saying to us yet I’ve had five students this year want to be surveyors the following year, there was seven, I’ve got more girls coming forward, I’ve got more kids from ethnic backgrounds from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Because again, that’s a real drive at the minute, lots of engineers are not engineers, lots of surveyors are white middle class, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if we aren’t for a diverse population, then that built environment needs to be built by people from a diverse background
Matt Nally 12:33
completely. And that way, you end up with better buildings, because you consider more more people’s use cases with with those buildings as well. And the way they want to interact. I was actually going to one of my questions on the list is what type of reactions do you get from people, different ages, different genders, or ethnicities, just find people either have a different reaction to either awareness of it, or whether they feel they could have gone into it. And therefore that engagement helps to break down a barrier that they might have had in their mind, or
Sarah Noble 13:06
Yeah, I think for the many, when you’re born, you’re not aware of gender imbalance, or gender specific behaviours. But as you grow up, you’re told to behave a certain way, you’re told to perhaps follow a certain pathway in life. So if I go to a careers fair, I’m thinking of one in my mind, now that I went to a lot of the young ladies were saying it’s not glamorous, I don’t want to be in a hardhat and muddy boots and in the rain, you know, I’m going to run away or I’m going to ruin my, my curls or, you know, trying to say to you can be both glamorous and a surveyor at the same time. And it’s those perceptions. I think the other perception we often get from parents, from ethnic minority backgrounds, is that it’s not akin to being an accountant or a barrister. And they want their children to go into professional job, but it is it’s you know, being a chartered surveyor is akin to being a doctor or a lawyer or a barrister. And it’s, it’s trying to guess bust those myths so that the profession becomes acceptable to young people and to their parents, because parents ultimately have a huge impact. Oh, yeah, no, so I just wanted more some for university. You know, I didn’t want I let him have free choice of what he wanted to do. He’s quite happy publishing but a lot of parents almost make decisions on behalf of their children and have dreams and aspirations on behalf of their children. So yeah, it’s about busting those myths something can just saying you know, are actually, depending on what pathway did you do, you could be schmoozing people over cheese and wine in a nice glamorous dress or suit. You could be driving a nice car. You don’t necessarily spend your days in the rain on a cold site. Anything to get across again, it’s a passport to travel. A lot of our Chartered Surveyors have come and gone out to Qatar, Dubai to work on these trails.
Matt Nally 14:57
Yeah, that’s one bit you forget actually as the doors it does open But it’s one thing I was actually gonna ask later on, but you touched on it a moment ago was the fact that you, I suppose have ambassadors from the profession that go out and, and deliver stuff on the ground. So how can surveyors potentially reach out and on what what role can they fulfil? In terms of day to day being able to go out and do stuff go to school?
Sarah Noble 15:27
I mean, we’ve got, we’ve been phenomenal the response, we’ve got about 450 of our members in the UK alone, who have stepped up and said, I’m more than happy to be an ambassador. So ambassadors, they could go into schools, they can go into T level colleges, they can talk to apprentices, they can go talk to degree students, so they can physically go in and deliver a session, they can do something online, if that’s, that fits into their busy working day. We’ve had members support us with the influencer sessions in the evening. So blessing the finish their busy working day, they’ve joined us at 630 to deliver an hour session to parents, carers and teachers. I’ve got surveyors doing many videos for me. So I’ve got recently about five surveyors who have sent me a little video, it’s just 30 seconds long that we can use an Instagram giving me three reasons why they love surveying. So that there are myriad ways that people can help. I’m in the middle of planning a sixth form competition for summer 24, we’re going to be looking at surveys to support that. So we’re going to ask groups sick forms to come along, redesign, a rundown High Street. And the idea is each team will be allocated to surveyor to assist. So we’re going to run those in our offices in Birmingham, London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, so surveys and come along support that. So yeah, I mean, if surveyors want to get in touch with me, I’m happy to share my contact details with you. Yeah, brilliant, that the more the merrier. And, yeah, you we just need, you don’t need to have any teaching background. You don’t necessarily need to be dBs, you like being on your own with them. But just someone’s got a passion to share their their love for tonight.
Matt Nally 16:59
That sounds that sounds that the some very different ways you can engage with people, not just a traditional sit there stand in front of someone do a PowerPoint presentation. And actually, it’s not here. There’s value in that. And you do have to do that sometimes. But I hadn’t considered the very interactive version of, you know, redesign, high street and potentially a little models. And there’s different ways, different ways of actually making more engaging.
Sarah Noble 17:20
I know most of the work hybrid now. So I’m only doing two, three days in the office. If you if you are in an office, or you’re doing a site visit could a student and I’m thinking 16 plus the health and safety come with you on that visit. So spend a morning with you and afternoon, even just spend a couple of hours not talking about a week’s shadowing, but just a little bit of insight, just so it can either say to the young person, that’s definitely for me or no. Yeah, you know that that’s, that’s really insightful and useful.
Matt Nally 17:47
bring that to life? And do you have sort of standard stuff that you can you can provide people with, they’re going to do a talk in a school or something where they can be like a presentation deck or something like that. They don’t have to come and create it all themselves. Yeah.
Sarah Noble 18:01
So we’ve got a slide deck. It is an RSS branded slide deck that people can tweak it not precious. We’ve got a couple of video clips we can share. So we’ve got some RSS promotional clips. We’ve also got some students, not some students, we’ve got some young surveyors talking about how they got into the industry. We can share those, try think what else we’ve got. And then activities. So what we normally do is, we’ll go into a school, deliver slide deck, which is a bit boring, what afterwards do an activity with the kids. So we’ve got a few activities that we can say today is we can just take them off the peg, deliver those
Matt Nally 18:35
awesome, awesome. And then what? What misconceptions Do you think members have around sort of what the RSS does around engagement and trying to get people into progression? Because I know, I know, there’s discussions around potentially being an ageing professional and all this kind of stuff. But I haven’t heard much myself around perceptions of what Rick’s do or the RSS do around engagement, but they’re the things you hear about that. Maybe you’re wrong or
Sarah Noble 19:03
whilst that whilst there is a lot of positivity and a lot of support. I think lots of members think we’re not doing enough. And I think I just want to reassure people that we are doing the best we can with the resource we’ve got. And we have got a small team but we do leverage relationships with other groups. So for example, we’ve worked with the girls network, the land collective, reach out to kids are at K Girl Guides. We try and piggyback as many youth organisations as we can say whatever work they’re doing, we’re supporting it. So for example, reached out to kids already to K. They were already doing something with the Lord Mayor’s Challenge in London. And I said, Denise, we’ve got a venue come use our headquarters. So they came in did they’re already 2k event but then they spent some time with me talking about RICS talking about surveying, we did a tour of the headquarters. We’ve got a lovely rooftop garden that was able Westminster. So that was really lovely afternoon. And that means also the schools that attended I’ve said To the crazy leaders that accompany the children, let’s keep in touch. Let’s do this every year. So we are, I just want to reassure people, we are doing as much as we can with the resource and budget, we’ve got to spread the word. But if anyone’s got any ideas, how we can improve how we can do more? I, I’m open to suggestions.
Matt Nally 20:20
Yeah, I think that’s important when anything is to weigh in terms of, you know, there might be someone who has done something somewhere and they go actually, have you ever thought of this? And that’s, that can be helpful. But I think it’s, I think, often actually, by having a limited budget, you can come up with more creative ideas. And there’s, at the same time, there’s no point trying to replicate an entire school system, are you having enough people to go into every single school every day to talk about those things that just that would be misuse of budget and the on the other hand, so it’s, it’s using trusted sources that people like engaging with, like the Girl Guides and stuff like that. People are potentially more happy to engage with that, because there’s people they listen to day to day and they trust in?
Sarah Noble 20:59
Absolutely, I think what I want to do more of is, is to have a more joined up approach. So I was talking to Steven from the real big the real Academy of assets, I think it is, and he represents a property generally. And what I would like to do is joined forces with other professionals, so maybe go in with the engineers, or go in with the architects, and spend a day in a school just talking about property in general. Yeah, yeah. Because actually, you might have an audience of 100 children, only three of those might want to be surveyors. And that’s great. I’m happy with those three. But what about the rest of them? Because, you know, I don’t need to tell you. This, the broad scope or range of jobs within the built environment is huge. There is something for every type of person personality. So I think joining forces with other professions, and strength in numbers is something perhaps we need to look at moving forward.
Matt Nally 21:51
Yeah, that’s just a very good idea that it pulling resources pulling ideas, and and that works. Yeah, definitely. I think the just going back to one of the things that she mentioned earlier, that I think would be useful to look at potentially is what they’re different challenges you’ve got in different parts of the different pathways in terms of some already actually very well engaged with and you get people coming through Naturally, there are others where I don’t know enough of the pathways to suggest which ones but there’s certain areas, whether it’s residential or commercial, where there’s fewer people going through those routes, and it’s potentially more of a challenge.
Sarah Noble 22:32
So that’s I think residential is probably the most popular pathway. Thank you. SP Yes, I think it would be or land surveying, they’re struggling to recruit onto courses and struggling to recruit into firms. And, as I said, the mineral surveyor. And then there was another one that I came across a valuation of business assets and business machinery, that that is, that’s a dying pathway. And that will be I think, there will be huge gaps in the labour market soon. If we don’t make your people aware of these. And it was really, as you say, it’s really hard. You can’t go into school and go through all 20 pathways, the kids will be asleep. But yeah, just trying to get across that range of pathways within surveying, you know, even someone that deals with antiques, they can be a surveyor valuing antiques. So it’s wider than young people think but it is really hard often think it’d be really good to have sort of one of those documentaries, you know, where they finally have the ambulances round or the folly police round, kind of a flood. Oh, yeah, that’s a nice. That’d be phenomenal.
Matt Nally 23:32
That would be actually, I wonder if anyone’s thought of it?
Sarah Noble 23:36
Yeah, I think we were approached, but it was one of those where you don’t have any say in the final edit. And I just see the bloopers in and just, I’m not sure that’d be the biggest
Matt Nally 23:46
Yeah, it’s a difficult one. Because on the one hand, you know that you’re not doing anything that’s wrong in terms of therefore shouldn’t if at the end of it, it’s so easy to edit something out of context, or put a different spin on something. Yeah. So don’t worry, this barely gets edited. So but, ya know, that can be that can be interesting. You do see a lot of these programmes. I don’t know whether it’s the DIY SOS, I suppose one, I suppose is the building side of things are referred refurb side of things. And then you’ve got your 999, traffic, cops, all this kind of stuff.
Sarah Noble 24:24
So you’ve got home. Yeah, but then that’s a bit misleading. I think, you know, I remember when I was still in school teaching, and a couple of kids that are just I just want to be a property developer and they thought they were going to leave school and just develop properties like that. I don’t think they understood that there was maybe a bit of a ladder to climb before they got to that point. And I think profits they might have a slightly inflated
Matt Nally 24:49
idea. I think it’s when you have been on one side of the camera, you do start to see how some of it works and you know, things are scripted slightly and it has to be entertaining at the end of the day at the same time,
Sarah Noble 25:01
no, this is it. No, I get that I get
Matt Nally 25:05
that, I think that’s been really interesting. What are your, I suppose your goals with the role over the next few years so that they’re sort of things that you’re working towards to in terms of new ideas, and my main
Sarah Noble 25:20
remit is to increase conversion to membership. Ultimately, the end of the day RFCs has been around, I think, 154 years. So we want to make sure our RICS is still around in another another 154 years, because you know, it’s about protecting the public in terms of living in safe and working safe buildings. So the RSS is very important in terms of what it does, in terms of the engagement team. So it is about converting people to members, it’s about raising awareness of RICS as a brand. So even if young people aren’t going to go into profession, are they going to use the brand, when he buys sell houses, etc, for advice about party, all hedges, etc. And we economy of the next 10 years faces a real challenge in terms of de skilling, in terms of the labour market, that there are so many skills that are required to make sure that our building stock is fit for purpose, to ensure that we can retrofit all buildings to ensure that we can have safe, affordable building. So we’re relying on that next generation of young people coming through to do that for us. But unless we start educating schools, about the skills, these young people need to fill these roles, then we’re gonna have to get our skills from overseas for our skilled workers from overseas. And I think the green economy is massive as well, it was going to be massive in terms of filling those roles. So about, you know, heat pumps, hydrogen fueled boilers, we need people, young people coming through that can fit all these into our building stock as well, you know, looking at, I’ve seen these windows, where they’re not just windows, but their solar panels as well. So it’s having people being able to manufacture those fit those. So it’s about making our young people and our teachers and educators aware of the skills that will be needed. And it’s really hard because schools are preparing young people for jobs that we don’t know about, or jobs that don’t exist yet. So it’s making sure these right skills as they come through. So that built environment is safe in their hands. It’s a real challenge. And it is one that RFCs can’t do on its own. And this is why I talk about maybe joining forces with other organisations to build environment to make sure that we’ve got the workforce coming through this fit for purpose, because at the minute, you know, I love the deal of the younger generation, but a lot of kids are coming out of school with with low skills. No, YouTube, YouTubers can’t can’t build our next generation or building.
Matt Nally 27:54
Well, that’s it’s a really good point. I think. We there’s two challenges, I suppose. One is the rate of change and acceleration of change in the types of materials being produced and technologies that were available. But there is also a sort of, I suppose, a growing trend in, you know, being an influencer as a social media influencer. And you know, that being perceived as an easy way to make money actually, if I some people make a lot of money, but everyone was talking about, like, go and create a video and put it up there. But there will there are there is becoming a shortage of skills and a lot of a lot of industries because of that. I don’t know whether there’s a fear of hard work from some people. I don’t think it’s that so much I don’t quite quite put my finger on why that there’s maybe that that situation happening where we are getting sort of dropping skills.
Sarah Noble 28:44
I just don’t think what’s the word I need? The education system isn’t sophisticated enough, producing round pegs in square holes. Whereas the education system needs to work more closely with the world and work to ensure that the people that are coming out of the system are slotting into those gaps. You know, the NHS is crying out for workers engineering surveying. And somehow we’re not getting it quite right. And that’s a huge that’s you I can’t fix that with this conversation.
Matt Nally 29:19
That’s very, very high level. I suppose on that note, then did you do get many opportunities to speak with government and politicians around? How potentially you can work with them to implement what’s discussed in schools and curriculum? And yeah, there
Sarah Noble 29:35
are I mean, there are lots of groups now. So we’ve got the CIC, the CLC. I had a meeting this morning with the CEC who actually gets the benchmarks, looking at fine tuning those to improve careers, education schools. So there are loads of groups out there plotting and planning, but nothing’s really put in place yet. So they were there. There were loads of conversations, but I think it’s about I think everyone’s just struggling to pull everybody together in one place. So we just need that one thought leader to say, I’m the one to do it.
Matt Nally 30:04
Yeah, no, I agree with I think so I suppose. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of challenges. In terms of, you know, the RICS can’t be expected to go and fix the school system, which influences lots of other things. Yeah, definitely not. But there’s a lot, I think, from what you said that the members can help with in terms of grassroots level, spreading the awareness. And, again, anything, which is quite exciting.
Sarah Noble 30:26
It’s about their circles of control. And we can only do what’s within our own gift really. And if that is if that one single gesture is that we can go into school and deliver an assembly or a workshop, or we can mentor a young person, or we can create a 32nd video, if everyone has that one little gesture, or that one little contribution that that together can have a huge impact.
Matt Nally 30:48
Yeah, it’s the power of lots of small things coming together that might that be changed. And so I suppose it’s important not to feel that as a member, perhaps not not to. Not to think oh, it’s definitely so it’s someone else’s job to go and do you know, you can go and give at one hour a year, I do one presentation a year at school, and every member did one of those. And that be a huge outreach and a huge awareness that will be generated. So it’s it’s, yeah, not not feeling that it’s one not my job, but also the contribution you might have won’t make much difference. That is a combined effort.
Sarah Noble 31:24
Yeah, it’s a ripple effect, isn’t it? And I think just think about how lost you felt when you were 15. Not knowing which way you’re going to turn? Or where would you be in 10 years? How are you going to rent a house? Buy a house? I mean, I don’t know. My husband always said that he was too busy worrying about his next football match. But I remember being 15 and neurotic and panicked and thinking, how am I ever going to adult? But yeah, it’s scary when you’re that young, and you just don’t know what your next step is. So if there was an adult, they’re just saying, Well, this is a profession that I went into, or it found me I’ve really enjoyed it. This is why it could be that light bulb moment for that child.
Matt Nally 31:54
Yeah, definitely. I do remember if being quite a difficult, I wasn’t someone that knew what I wanted to do straightaway. And it’s it’s tough, not tough. But it’s you feel more pressure when other people around you feel that they know what they want to do to be about. You want to be a I don’t know, whatever it is a journalist or a pretty random random things that
Sarah Noble 32:17
there’s pressure from the adults around you as well, because adults want to say that I want to know now what you’re going to be and you’d think I’m 50? I don’t know. So yeah.
Matt Nally 32:27
So I’ve really enjoyed chatting today. It’s been a lot of interesting topics and, you know, ideas that and ways that people can tend to get involved. If people do want to reach out to you and learn about how they can potentially go and give a half an hour talk somewhere or get involved in some of the projects you’re doing. How do they get in touch?
Sarah Noble 32:46
So they can email me at s [email protected]? Yeah, that’s probably the most simple way to be honest. And I’ll get back to them right away. So it’s not always keen to grab a volunteer and take that opportunity. But yeah, I mean, if anyone’s got a policy of early engagement in in filling skills gap, please let me help you for the magic ones at the minute.
Matt Nally 33:08
Awesome. Well, hopefully we’ll do another catch up soon and see, see how things progressed since today.
Sarah Noble 33:13
All right. Thank you. Thanks for your time.