Business Apprentice Review

I am a business apprentice. I was placed in the Procurement function when I first started the my apprenticeship. I have done operation and strategic roles. In operational, I spent my time purchasing and managing suppliers. In the strategic roles, I spent my time working with the supplier to improve production rates.

I have learnt many new skills. In placement I learnt all about the different skills I need for procurement such as negotiation skills and using the different buying systems. I also learnt how to improve capacity rates so this taught me more about using my initiative. With the NVQ work, I learnt more about answering questions and writing essays.

I enjoy the work side of the programme. I do not however enjoy the way our off the job training is done. I think we should be split into smaller groups to make it easier to learn, I also think that we should be treated as adults because we are treated like high school children and this means most of the apprentices act as such.

I don't feel like the business scheme is organised well at all. They keep changing our college dates which mean people who have already booked their holidays are then missing the off the job training through no fault of their own. they also keep changing the order of the units that we are doing. They put the exam before the Recap session for the exam so people got less revision.

I receive lots of support from the employer. With sickness, holidays and all the benefits such as flexi pay and time to complete my NVQ work, the business does support our learning. What lets the apprenticeship down is the assessors not having enough support. They are stretched to the max when one is off ill and it is us who suffer because we then don't get our work back for a very long time.

I receive some support, I would say an adequate amount in most cases unless (through no fault of your own) you miss a session and then they are not helpful. They arrange recap sessions for after the actual exams and they also take months to get back to you regarding marking your work by which time you have almost forgotten everything on that unit so it is harder to redo your work.

I feel that the qualification only allows the basics and if not, it is just telling you things you don't really need to know. When working in the business, most decisions you have to make are based on common sense and not your knowledge on communication theories written by people hundreds of years ago.

There are many extra curricular activities that you can take part in if you have the get up and go to find them. If you don't try to get involved, you miss out which is only right. We are given many chances to help out with events but there are not many activities like sports that you can get involved in.

Yes

The company on a whole is great. There are many perks to working here, most of which you get as an apprentice (over 18 anyway) but there are more also when you come out of your time. One perk of not being an apprentice anymore would be Overtime. I think the apprenticeship itself could be vastly improved more focusing on the first recruitment side and also the organisation of the course but I do think it is beneficial to get you through the door.

Be honest, be yourself. Don't try to fit in with the sheep because you will only come off looking worse and get a bad name for yourself. Use it as an opportunity to gain experience. Make your application really good but also think if it is something you definitely want to do because some people slowly realise as much as they like the social aspect of being an apprentice, the business side maybe isn't for them.