Published: 08 Feb 2023
This week is National Apprenticeship Week, celebrating everything that is great about apprenticeships. The theme for this year is ‘Skills for Life’.
Apprenticeships are an excellent way to acquire skills, grow your knowledge and get great, genuine work experience. For many people, they are a way of getting a foot in the door to progress a career. It’s a means of earning a salary while studying, learning essential skills and gaining a recognised qualification.
At TSA we have always prioritised professional skills and we remain absolutely committed to addressing the skills gap within surveying, which we know is an ongoing concern to our members. We have supported the creation of both the Level 3 and Level 6 Geospatial Apprenticeships, which are currently undergoing a review and revision of the standard. National Apprenticeship Week provides a timely excuse to reflect on surveying as a profession and to focus on its strongest ‘selling points’ for anyone looking to forge a surveying career.
Surveying offers a diverse and interesting range of careers. There are a number of routes to get into surveying in the first place, whether you have just left school, you are a graduate or you are just looking for a new professional challenge. However, for school leavers, seeking their first position, it is useful to have GCSEs in Maths and English. Geography GCSE may be considered desirable, but it is not essential by any means. Once you secure employment as a trainee surveyor, your employer can arrange basic survey training.
Why surveying?
- Surveying provides great scope for problem solving at lots of different levels
- You can work on a huge variety of projects and meet a very diverse and interesting range of people
- It’s far from being a ‘desk job’, with lots of fieldwork involved
- There are many opportunities to work with exciting cutting edge technology, from drones to 3D laser scanning
- Surveying can provide an opportunity to travel extensively – at home and abroad
- You can work on really important infrastructure projects, that will make a big difference to the lives of many people.
Find out more about becoming a surveyor here and take a look at the variety of job opportunities currently available here.
