We’re celebrating International Women in Engineering Day 2022 by speaking to Shannen Lowther about her role as a Vehicle Remarketing Specialist at Copart.
We’re proud to have the largest, fully qualified, vehicle engineering team in the UK salvage industry (producing over 100,000 vehicle damage reports each year) and working closely alongside them is our team of Vehicle Remarketing Specialists.
Our Vehicle Remarketing Specialists perform a vital role by thoroughly reviewing all of our Sellers’ vehicles to ensure they are always shown in the best possible light at our online auctions and deliver the very best financial returns.
As a company that actively supports and encourages gender equality, it will of course be no surprise to hear that we have many female Vehicle Remarketing Specialists!
All our roles here at Copart are open to everyone, as we are fully committed to ensuring a diverse, representative, and progressive workforce. As well as female Engineers, Drivers, and Yard Operatives, we have many female senior managers within the business including our CEO.
To mark International Women in Engineering Day 2022, we spoke to Shannen about her role, which sits within our Vehicle Management department, and what she thinks about working in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
What does a Vehicle Remarketing Specialist do?
I am responsible for ensuring that all images and information used on our auction site to sell vehicles meet our high standards and provide our Members with an unmatched auction experience.
On a day-to-day basis, this will involve assessing and reviewing the vehicle information received from our engineering team, ensuring the specification, images, description, and ABI Categorisation are all correct.
I’ll also liaise with our Sellers and their representatives to provide support where needed and suggest changes that need to be made to more comprehensively describe damage and optimise value.
It’s a very unique and specialised role, which helps to provide a more transparent online experience for our Members who purchase vehicles through our online auctions.
And for our Sellers, we help to build stronger and more collaborative working relationships, while doing everything we can to showcase their vehicles in the best possible light to achieve the best possible financial returns.
What made you want to do this role?
I’d already done a couple of different roles at Copart since joining in 2015, first as a Customer Service Representative and then as a Dispatcher.
I decided that I wanted a more challenging role that would give me a sense of achievement and enable me to keep learning new and different things all the time.
I joined Vehicle Management as a Vehicle Remarketing Administrator in 2017, before progressing into a Vehicle Remarketing Specialist role in 2020.
It’s great to work for a company that encourages personal development and offers plenty of opportunities for career advancement.
What do you find most enjoyable about it?
The people I work with make every single day fun. It’s like being part of a family and I’ve never experienced any kind of discrimination or prejudice, despite this being a typically male dominated industry. I’ve always just felt like one of the team.
There is always something new to learn or challenges to take on. We provide a wide range of services for our Sellers, increasing the values their assets achieve, and it’s very rewarding to feel like I contribute to delivering great results for Copart.
Do you think some people would see this as an unusual role for a female?
When I first started in the team it was a predominantly male environment and as I was the only female in the office it did feel a little bit overwhelming. But I soon fitted right in and now it feels like I’ve never been anywhere else!
There are now five women in the department so there’s no perception that roles within the team are aimed towards a specific gender. It’s not really something anyone would even think about, as there’s no reason why a woman could not do any role that they wanted to at Copart.
L-R: Vehicle Remarketing teammates Sophie Outhwaite , Emma Dyer, and Lucy Noonan
Why are awareness campaigns like International Women in Engineering Day important?
It’s important because it shows women who may be looking for a different job role that anything is possible.
I think some women still feel there are barriers to working in engineering or the automotive sector as a whole, as many roles are still dominated by men, and this can be daunting.
However, I do believe that perceptions are changing and it’s great that awareness campaigns like this can highlight the fantastic range of career opportunities are out there for women, that they may never have considered before.
What would your advice be to women who are thinking about a career in vehicle engineering?
I would say, just go for it! If you don’t try you won’t know.
If you are woman with a passion for cars, we have an extensive and diverse range of career opportunities at Copart, so if you’d like to find out more visit Copart.co.uk/jobs or email jobs@copart.co.uk.
More about International Women in Engineering Day 2022
National Women in Engineering Day was launched for the first time in the UK on 23rd June 2014 by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) to celebrate its 95th anniversary.
In 2017, National Women in Engineering Day became international for the first time due to the interest and enthusiasm developed by the international audience and participants in the previous years. International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) was born to enable the celebration of women in engineering to become global.
Discover more about International Women in Engineering Day 2022 by following #INWED22 & #ImagineTheFuture on social media.
