General Management Degree Apprentice Review

I am a General Management apprentice at Transport for London. My role is very varied, as I switch placements every six months. I have worked in operational roles, including station assistance, and office-based roles, including events, partnerships, and human resources (HR). My current HR placement is in recruitment where my roles include outreach to schools and colleges and managing recruitment for allocated roles from start to finish.

Throughout my apprenticeship, I have learnt new skills and developed existing skills such as teamwork, time management and organisational skills. My role is very varied, as I switch placements every six months, enabling me to enhance my skill set by experiencing different areas of the business. I have worked in operational roles, including station assistance, and office-based roles, including events, partnerships, and human resources. The placements I have experienced so far have allowed me to develop skills including teamwork, organisational skills and stakeholder engagement.

I thoroughly enjoy my apprenticeship programme. Every team I have worked in has been open and caring and provided amazing support. I have had the opportunity to manage projects that enable me to make a difference in my organisation and develop my personal skill set. I have amazing support from my placement managers, line managers, and apprenticeship educational providers.

My programme is well structured in terms of work and study at university. Every Friday is our allocated study day to attend university and we have extra study days if needed during exam season/when assignments are due. I can rotate placements every six months, which provides flexibility in my programme structure. However, better organisation for operational placements and planning for our necessary operational training is needed so that we can more effectively plan our sixth month rotations.

The support provided from my apprenticeship is excellent. I have had amazing support and guidance from my company through my placement manager, line manager and members of my team. I always feel confident in asking for advice/questions and I feel that everyone is happy to help and I will be given thorough guidance.

My training provider provides great support during my quarterly check-in meetings with my company. These meetings include a university representative, my line manager, and myself where we talk about my progress e.g., university assignments as well as my well-being and how I am managing my work/life balance. I also feel I get in-depth assignment briefs that guide us during our assignments. However, I feel that my university could provide more guidance in terms of our End Point Assessment.

I enjoy learning theoretical knowledge at university and then applying this to my work at Transport for London (TfL). I often find modules e.g., Human Resources link effectively to my work at TfL such as my current Recruitment placement. However, sometimes I find work I learn at uni is not necessarily used in my day-to-day role.

Yes, TfL has excellent networking and extracurricular activities such as wellbeing walks at lunchtime, and sports teams such as football teams. There are also many networking groups including the Women's Colleague Network group which holds informative webinars and networking sessions. There is also the Graduate, Apprentice and Intern Committee which I am part of, which holds many events. I recently participated in a Charity Dog walk to raise money for retired police dogs.

Yes

I would highly recommend Transport for London (TfL) to a friend because every team I have been part of are friendly and uphold our values of being Open, Caring and Adaptable which is very important to me. The work-life balance at TfL is amazing and there are so many varied projects and tasks to get involved in and enhance your skillset. The also ample networking events and sessions to get involved with including wellbeing walks and webinars.

I would advise prospective applicants to research Transport for London's values and our goals as a company to show passion and motivation for the role. I would also advise applicants to research the role they are applying for and competencies needed, as this can help demonstrate technical skills needed for the role.