Apprentice Provisioning Engineer Review

I'm and Activate Provisioning Engineer, so in my day to day role I'm provisions and pre-building circuits to be installed to business customers. I work along side my mentor who helps me along the way and teaches me everything I need to do to complete my day to day job.

I have learnt a few skills around using the network here at Virgin and I have been in sighted into a CCNA networking qualification that I hope to achieve soon. One key skill I have learnt with being a lot younger is that I have learnt how to interactive with peers a lot older than me.

There are a few ups and downs with this program and I feel like the company with this new degree don't have much of a vision with us and a prospectus. There isn't much of a learning path for us to follow and it can be very 'wishy-washy' at times. I enjoy working with the people I work with, but I feel like the management team isn't up to scratch for us apprentices.

Here at Virgin I as an apprentice don't feel very valued at all. I feel like I am right at the bottom and we are just left to one side to get on with our own jobs. we haven't been set any targets etc and there doesn't seem much of a learning system here.

Not good. There wasn't even a proper induction for us to go on here at Virgin and the training is very lethargic. We get a lot of time studying which is very good, but it feels like it is because it gets us out of the way of people and gives us something to do. my mentor is very supportive but it's be nice to learn a lot more from him/ or someone else. The task delegation here is awful and doesn't exist. We don't even have our monthly 1on1's

We do receive a good amount of support from Aston University and they are always on hand if we have any problems. The tutors aren't always the best but there are many people I can rely on if I ever need a helping hand.

Our manager is very work orientated and isn't so much about the learning side, even though we haven't seen much progression with our work here at Virgin. We haven't heard from anyone really from HR up until about 2 weeks ago, when some people didn't even know we existed...

The salary is great, but at the start we was told that all our Uni expenses would be paid for, which they wasn't. We have all also had to go out and purchase our own laptops as the company cannot provide for the course we are doing. The one great thing is we get our fuelled paid for when we do travel to Uni but to get a Hotel we sometimes have to go out of our cost center to receive one, as we have been told they cant budget us in.

There are some oppurtuinites out side of work along the lines of personal work outings but other than the work Christmas party there isn't much else that is actually company related. I Know that virgin do a lot of charity events within the workplace which is good.

Yes

They are very chilled out employers and if you put in the work you will achieve well and get lots out of Virgin. But if you don't have the determination, there wont be anyone pushing you, getting targets met. The pay is very good and work life balance is exceptional.

I would say mainly to not get nervous as here at Virgin we are very relaxed and the interview process was very chilled out. Sometimes not a good thing. the application process and times between interviews was very long and puts you on edge a little.