Research Apprentice Review

I rotate through different teams in the Research department and have to work on various projects for each team. Each rotation usually starts with a month or two of intense immersion into theory and into the context of my project. Then I am given quite a bit of freedom to experiment and find my own way to a solution, while still being able to fall back on the support of other members of the team.

I would say that there is great emphasis on learning and development during the apprenticeship. I am often encouraged to explore options that may not be very relevant to the task at hand but that my team mates consider to be very important for the role in general. There are also numerous events and activities open to everyone in the business for learning new skills.

I enjoy my programme immensely, I don't feel like it's a chore to come to work. I work on interesting technologies with interesting people. It is also great that I am given quite a bit of freedom to explore the topics that I am curious about and that among the people around me I can find experts on pretty much anything I can think of.

I think the structure is great. For the first 2 years we gain breadth of knowledge by rotating through different teams and finding out not only different perspectives of the business but also about ourselves and what we like to work on. For the last 2 years we specialise and get to dive deep into the subject matter and become experts.

We receive a great deal of support, not only in learning technical topics and business skills to do our work, but also free counselling, employee financing with better rates, and people in general just being very nice and friendly. I also have a disability and the support from my manager and team mates has been amazing.

The training provider has been very accomodating of my disability, if with a bit more paperwork than I would have liked. The lecturers are all very helpful and respond quickly to emails, and there are a great deal of support services available to students, whether for studying, employability or just general wellbeing.

I don't learn as much from university as I do on the job, but what I do learn often covers the gaps in my knowledge, and I am sure will come in handy later on. Writig assignments is also very good practice for writing the documentation needed at work.

There are too many extra-curricular activities to list. There are all sorts of conferences, guest lectures, tech showcases and other events for technical aspects and then there are foreign language lessons, various sports on site, book clubs, hiking groups, theatre-going groups, travel groups doing so many events that I never bothered to through all of them. Also, if you can't find what you want to do it's very easy to start your own and advertise through internal comms to other employees who may want to join you.

Yes

It's just a great place to spend your time. We spend about a third of our lives working somewhere, BT is a place where you can be productive on something meaningful, have a nice relaxed environment and also find all sorts of volunteering and fun activities to engage in.

Just talk about what you're passionate about at the interview. As long as that has something to do with STEM you will definitely get the job. As an apprentice you're not expected to know too many things but you are expected to have that spark of curiosity in your eyes.