No mountain high enough to stop Ryan's career dream (From The Northern Echo)

No mountain high enough to stop Ryan's career dream

12:27pm Wednesday 11th March 2009 in North-East Business News By Deborah Johnson

WHEN Ryan Smith was made redundant, he was told it would probably be the best idea for him to look for work as a plumber, a job in which he was experienced.

But the 20-year-old had other ideas – he wanted to indulge his lifelong ambition of becoming a ski instructor.

And now Mr Smith, who was one of 500 people made redundant when the Electrolux factory in Spennymoor, County Durham, closed last year is in the Canadian Rockies for a three-month training period to achieve his dreams.

It marks a massive change of career direction for Mr Smith, a storeman at Electrolux, whose training is being funded by his former employer.

“I am absolutely ecstatic, this is something I’ve always wanted to do,” said Mr Smith, who has been skiing since he was nine.

“I love skiing. I think it’s just the fact that you are outdoors, you can go where you want without boundaries and, of course, there’s the apres-ski.’’ Mr Smith’s story encapsulates the spirit of the If We Can, You Can challenge, now launching for a second year, which seeks to revive the entrepreneurship for which the North-East was once famed the world over.

After the blow that he would be made redundant when Electrolux announced in late 2007 it would be closing its cooker factory, Mr Smith worked alongside outplacement company Right Management, appointed by the Electrolux Response Group to work with employees to identify new careers and to increase their chances of getting jobs by helping them write CVs and with job interview training.

However, his skiing ambitions were not met with initial enthusiasm.

“When I put the idea to the man at Right Management he said I might be better off going for something more ordinary like my old trade of plumbing,” he remembered.

“But I didn’t want to do that, I’d just be doing that as a job, I wanted to go for something I really wanted to do.’’ So Mr Smith, from Bishop Auckland, decided to take matters into his own hands and researched the Canadian skiing course, submitted his application, and was accepted. In a further boost, he learned that all his training costs would be met by Electrolux.

He is doing his training in the resort of Jasper, in the Rockies and, after qualifying as a ski instructor, will look for summer work as a mountain bike instructor before the next skiing season.