IM Service Managment Apprentice Review

The day to day role of an IM apprentice involves coming in and reading emails to check for things like meetings and important updates on pieces of work. When starting a new placement we read through process documents and shadow team members to get a better understanding of what the team does. After we know about the team and can carry out the role again depending on placement we work on simple business as usual (BAU) work, Small project work or normal project work. This is given to the team to deal out amongst its employees, as we progress through our placements we take on more responsibilities in the amount and type of work we are completing. Some examples of work I have completed are re-writing contracts with help from guides for major suppliers, raising and carrying out changes on major TfL applications, managing Problem and incident tickets by collaborating with teams to help resolve major and minor severities, completed UAT testing for new versions of applications.

TfL givees many opportunites to enhance and gain new skills by offering lots of different training to its apprentices, Since joining the apprenticeship I have completed the ITIL Foundation course as well as attending many other internal courses on how to improve myself, improving the workplace and application admiministrator courses. We will also be gaining the APM introductory certificate, business analysis foundation and ITIL Intermidiate in the future and have been doing an NVQ level 3 diploma in Information Technology since the start. Since joining back in September I have also learnt how Information Management supports the business and how they rely on eachother to provide an excellent service to its mass of customers everyday, as well as general business I have learnt about different process and the structure a thriving IT department needs to stay up to date and evolve.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the apprenticeship scheme and have been amazed at the amount of opportunites to develop myself and get invovled in day to day activities carried out by the company. Everyone goes out of there way to ensure I was always involved in the work and understood why. It has exceeded my expactations in the amount of knowledge I have gained and what ive been able to get involved with.

Always appreciated by individual teams as they appreciate the fact we are helping them out and getting work done. Managers set objectives and help us complete them with feedback in an end of placement review. Teams understand that with there guidance we cang et fully invovled in all the bau/project tasks they are carrying out daily.

First week was inductions into TfL and into IM, training was told to us in advanced so we knew what we would be doing over the 2 years. We frequently meet with Apprenticeship managers/mentors showing there support to us and encouraging us to take all the opportunites TfL provides, they helped us with any queries we had with work in general or our NVQ modules. We were involved in extra activites and getting visibility of TfL as a business and not just IM, these included visiting major control centres at different locations and getting to walk on the Underground track at night. Placements schedules was set out in advance so we knew where we would be going and then could suggest alterations we might want to make.

during the first year we had FCT who visited the office once a month to help with NVQ, since WKC have taken over the contract we have visited there college to meet with the new trainers and they have shown us how to upload our work to there site.

Managers and mentors constantly arranged catchups and made time to discuss how we were getting on and to provide support if we needed it, this was a chance for us to ask questions and mention things we were concerned about.

With the free oyster card and 75% of national rail season ticket the salary is enough to cover living costs

There are many opportunites to get involved with TfL and see the business, the travel ambassador scheme allows TfL employess to voulnteer during times where the network will be busier than normal. they have frequent workshops on the TfL behaviours and how to create a better workplace. I also play 5 a-side with colleagues after work and there are many different networking events which include eating and drinking to getting involved with team activities

Yes

offers a very competitive salary/benefits and provides a great opportunity to get into Information Management, TfL is a huge company with many customers and its great to be a part of providing services to them daily. TfL are committed to furthering its apprentices by giving us support and training making us valuable assets to the company for the future.

Get experience in the workplace before applying whther it be a week during half term as the experience will help your chances and shows that you are committed to learning and improving. There are English and Maths assessments so practice these as well as your interview techniques, during the interview show enthusiasm and demonstrate confidence and good people skills as networking is a vital part of the scheme.