Test technician apprentice Review

My role currently within the business is working within hall D on the Captor radar system. Daily I test the digital side of all the SSRI and SRI within a receiver that goes into the radar. I interact with many different people within the hall do to cards not working or passing them on to the next link in the chain. Me and my supervisor who I work with are both responsible for testing these card and deciding what’s wrong with them and fixing them.

I have learnt a number of new skills but they are mostly only applicable to the area that I working. They wouldn’t be much help outside of the working environment. I have however increased my confidence speaking to new people do to me having to do it almost every day. I haven’t had many training courses. The only courses that we have been on have been awareness sessions within the company.

I enjoy the program a lot due to it being so unique but it does have its flaws. Being miss communication between apprentices and management and sometimes our expectation are let down. I do however enjoy my work most days yes it does have its ups and downs but that’s like any working environment. The company overall met my expectations but wasn’t as well refined and advanced as I thought it would be.

Within the company I feel valued at time but other time I don’t. we can sometimes be over worked due to bad planning causing orders to be behind schedule. To compensate for this a lot of the workers put in a lot of effort to meet target but don’t get recognition for it. some of the time we are however recognised and given vouchers to say thank you for our hard work.

The program has a very good structure and layout on paper but when it comes to following that it can break down. For example there was a set placement plan that we all had to follow and recently that plan has fallen apart and people are being kept in placements or are having placements moves. Another problem with the plan is that sometime placements just don’t have the work for the apprentices to do witch is no fault of the placement managers it’s just a unavoidable problem. We have monthly apprentice meeting that are normally useful to us because it keeps us up to date with that’s going on. In the case of studying that is up to your supervisor and sometime that mean we have no study time and have to do it at home. The management team try to support us as best as they can.

We aren’t really offered much in the way or training we have a PVS system that has different training courses on it but most of us don’t know how to get onto the system and how to use it. if we ever have any question about training the management team or often happy to help as long as they aren’t too busy. The closes thing we have had to training was our awareness session that I mentioned before but they became very laborious and after about 4th one it was hard to keep taking the information in.

Our managers try to give us as much support as we ask for but there can sometimes be miscommunication. My mentor is extremely helpful and will try his best to help me out even if it’s nothing to do with him. Other mentor can sometime the complete opposite witch is a problem for other apprentices. The general attitude towards supporting us can be varied and can’t be pinpointed because it depends who you speak to.

I feel our salary should be higher than what it is. I normally just make it by each month with a small amount saved each month. With the new first years coming in on a higher wage than what we started at I feel that it should be fair that our wage should increase as well. My travel costs aren’t too bad for work but I know some people are traveling large distances to work here so I would imagine they struggle to afford/ justify the travel.

We are offered many different volunteering opportunities outside of the company but the problem is that they are pitched to us as “volunteering” but in actual fact if we don’t volunteer for them we are picked at random. This defeats the purpose of calling it volunteering. What they should do instead is the management team should see if there is interest in the event before agreeing with the outside party that they will do it.

Yes

I would recommend it due to it being a good starting point for young engineers and it allows them to progress through the company and get to higher positions if they want it. I would feel more comfortable recommending the company to more people however if they problems i addressed above could be sorted.

I can only really speak for test work but I would say Always stay enthusiastic for engineering and make sure they enjoy problem solving because that is a very big part of the testing jobs within the company and if you have any new ideas don’t be afraid to voice them because they could help benefit the company and yourself.