Your career story can draw more people to our industry

Careers in agriculture and horticulture exist across an incredibly wide spectrum - from the coal face of livestock and crop care to all the ancillary roles in finance, marketing and research - all are necessary for our sectors to function and indeed flourish. And you can help showcase the wide variety of routes into our industry using this NCW template.

Careers can be linear (like we all think when we start out) or they can be wonky (like mine and those of most people I know), BUT if real career paths are not visible, then potential new entrants will find it hard to see themselves our industries roles.

Share your story to promote our industry

During National Careers Week, many careers professionals and teachers in schools and colleges share their career paths with the young people they work with by putting these careers plaques or posters or their doors.

Of course, many people working in agriculture and horticulture have no 'door’ to hang their plaque on and even if they did, it would be hard to effectively share their career stories and pathways. But these career pathways are valuable evidence to show young people all the diverse ways you can contribute to the vital sectors that make up our industry. So how can we get all these micro-stories out there?

Last year the Mmmmake your Mark campaign resulted in the production of a wonderful suite of videos where individuals described their routes to the roles they now occupy. To enhance this, and following discussion with my fellow NCW Ambassadors, I suggest the creation of an industry set of 'virtual careers pathway door plaques' that could be displayed on our LinkedIn ‘office doors’.

You can find mine right here, produced using a simple pdf template made by the good people at NCW and based on the posters which, next week, will adorn doors in schools and colleges around the country. The information on these plaques is easy to absorb and the vast range of ‘routes to success’ can be appreciated.

If you have a career pathway you would be willing to share from your journey into farming and growing, please download this pdf, fill in a brief description of the steps you've taken in your careers and share your story visually on LinkedIn, using the hashtag #ncw2026. I will then collate the stories and share them on the Industry Careers Action Plan Careers Advice Hub.

I hope to see lots of virtual door plaques next week and I look forward to sharing them with my network of careers professionals in schools, colleges and the Careers Hubs.

Download the National Careers Week Career Path template and share your own route into our industry on social media.