RPA Developer Review

I am on an automation team and my daily tasks involve creating robots that perform manual and tedious tasks that were previously done by employees. I am responsible for creating, testing and maintaining them once they are deployed. I work with a small team who are spread over different parts of the UK and often travel to different locations.

I have learnt the automation software Blue Prism and have my certification in this. I have done many internal training courses for things like blockchain and chatbots. I have also done residential courses for m apprenticeship. I have developed my team work skills further as we are having to communicate effectively without seeing each other.

To begin with I wasn't enjoying it as much as I had hoped since all there was to do was training. Now that I am on the team and doing what I was hired to do I am really enjoying the program.

I am feeling a lot more valued now by IBM as I have been given alot of responsibility on my project and have done a presentation to the leads of the account. However to begin with I felt like they had taken too many apprentices on and didn't really know what to do with us all.

The program has been very well structured so far but as I have only been here 5 months I can't make a full judgement. From what I have been told it sounds like we are going to be given a lot of support throughout the apprenticeship and we have a dedicated career coach which is very helpful.

Our training provider is an external company and we haven't started the training with them yet but have had a meeting and they seem very supportive and have run us through what we will need to be doing.

I receive alot of support from my employer, espeically from my career coach and mentor on the project.

The salary is very fair and because I am on a client site my travel is paid for by the client which is a big help. There are also benefits like healthcare and pension schemes set up which are very generous. The only thing I would say is that they don't have London wages which meant if I was traveling to London everyday which is my base location then I would be spending a lot of money on travel which other people who don't go to London aren't and they are getting the same salary.

There are lots of opportunities outside of work to network with different people and give back to the company. There are multiple emails a week suggesting what you can get involved in. There are also many communities online for you to join.

Yes

I would recommend IBM to a friend because I have enjoyed the short time I have been here for and there is a real sense of community as we joined as a group of apprentices and we still meet up when we can. You aren't treated any different to other employees and are given the same responsibilities as a grad would.

Apply early and don't worry about the long wait between interviews and hearing a decision. My entire application process took about 8 months from when I first applied to hearing that I had got the job.