Electrical aerospace apprentice Review

As an electrical apprentice my daily tasks revolve around the electrical side of the typhoon program. Manufacturing and installing wiring looms, avionic trays and other assosiated electrics.

Before this apprenticeship i haddent done any hands on training at college or school. Now i study one day a week at college for a ND in aeronautical engineering and three days working on the shop floor along side skilld workers gaining experiance towards my NVQ and technical certificate. I have learnt a great deal so far and everyone is supportive

I enjoy it because its something i like doing. The people are helpful and make you feel welcome and are happy to help you with any problems. The company culture is really good.

I do feel valued by BAE and i feel i contribute to the program although sometimes i do feel that they just use us as cheap labour instead of moving us on to learn something new.

The program is well structured with enough time to complete everything we need to do in the time period.

Support is there when its needed but we are given enough guidance to get on with only seeing our assessors 1-2 times a month and when an assessment comes up. The college side of things could be better as the support, particuarly for maths isnt there and as a whole my class is struggling. We have informed the apropriot people but we are just getting more and more behind as the weeks go on.

The department im in at the moment isnt the best. Not sure what to do with us and we havent visited all the nessisary areas we needed to visit to complete our nvq work. I have made sugestions and even made up a plan for the apprentice manager which would of seen us(the 4 people in my placement) get around to each relivant area with enough time to learn something new on each section, but everything keeps getting pushed aside (as stated earlier the cheap/free labour) The support from the rest of the business is second to non though with no faults there.

It meets everything fine.

Yes, people are organising things to do all the time, sometimes for charity, sometimes for leisure. You make new friends whilst on the apprenticeship as you work with them near enough all the time for the first year.

Yes

In this day and age there arent many oppertunitys for young people out there, bae offer skills and hopefully a job for life with benifits people working for other companys could only dream of. I had a crappy dead end job before starting here, i know realise how lucky i am to have this.

With the application program revise mechanical science and math at gcse level for the apptitude tests. The questions that they ask on the application form will come up in the interview so prepare to expand on the points you made. try and get an understanding of the business before the interview and relax, try and be confident but not to much.