Finance Apprentice Review

I work in cost performance, which encompasses both costbase and capital accounting. Currently, I am more focussed on capital accounting. This involves looking after spend on capital projects for my business area by comparing budget to forecast to actual spend. With regards to costbase, I provide reports to my business area's HR team to help them to evaluate absence levels.

Prior to undertaking this apprenticeship, I had no finance background so I have been built from the ground up. Aside from finance knowledge and skills, I have greatly developed my my IT skills on a range of systems, specifically Excel. I have also pushed myself to develop my personal soft skills, in particular: public speaking & presenting skills.

I enjoy my programme. I feel that throughout the term of my scheme, I am pushed to develop myself in multiple different ways which gives me feelings of personal satisfaction. By moving through placements within the finance function, I am given the opportunity to experience different areas of finance and therefore become a more well-rounded employee.

My programme has a set placement structure (2x 6 month placements, then 4x 1 year placements), however this may not be the best way to go about it anymore. This is known, however change takes a very long time within this company, which causes a lot of frustration. This is not just with regards to placements and also applies to other areas.

I receive a really good amount of support. I receive help from the inclusive learning team and also additional support from my skills coach. My skills coach and I have weekly catch-ups at the end of the week to check in and see how I am doing. This makes it easy for me to flag if I need any extra help.

I do not receive noticeable support from Kaplan- I receive all of my support from BAE Systems. I find that Kaplan can be a very frustrating training provider to work with as learning resources are not free from error and their customer service team is not great. This is something that I have unfortunately got to just deal with as I have been told that there is nothing that can be done about this at this point in time. My skills coach shares these same frustrations.

I would most likely struggle to carry out my role effectively without working towards my CIMA qualification. It gives me a good amount of financial knowledge to be able to use in my job. I do wish that placements linked closer with our CIMA learning, however I think it's just the nature of BAE's complex operations.

There are lots of extra-curricular activities to get involved with. Some are professional networking events (ie conferences) and some are socials outside of working hours. This helps to cultivate a team feeling cross-functionally and gives us a chance to make friends and connections elsewhere in the business.

Yes

Very good place to work for apprentices. Great apprentice pay, lots of opportunity to develop and push yourself.

Know about what the company does and be prepared to demonstrate this before applying.