Engineering Apprentice Review

I am currently in my first year of the apprenticeship and therefore I am based 5 days a week at Harlow college and return to work during the school holidays. Whilst at college I do a mixture of both theory and practical work. When I return to work I spend my days shadowing the qualified technicians.

A new skill that I have learnt is to work with the imperial system as before hand I have only ever been trained to work with the metric system, however my new role at the airport will involve using both systems as we have both European and American technology at the airport.

Being an older student I do struggle a little being full time at a college as it’s a big change from a working environment, however when I return to work I have lots of fun and always feel included with the teams onsite and I believe it’s that enjoyment that helps me to learn more.

If I’m honest, Harlow college hasn’t been very organised with our apprenticeship, I’ve had mutiple different teachers try to teach all different things and I’m still not completely sure of what’s happening with this final year, however when I’m on site the work and teaching from the technicians is great and very well organised, couldn’t fault the onsite training.

I receive a lot of support from my employer, if I have any concerns I can simply pop into work and have a chat or they’re simply a phone call or email away and reply’s are very quick and helpful and if they can’t help with my issue they always point me in the right direction and even lead the way on occasion.

Harlow college has had some troubles to start the year with our course and I believe that if the teachers had more support from their management my experience would have been a lot better. Although now my experience is starting to improve and I hope it gets to the level it should be.

I believe that the qualification will help me in my role onsite at work because it will give me the basic knowledge I need to further gain on when on site and will mean that I can have the confidence to attend work and help where I can without feeling like I’d get it wrong.

There are no sports teams to get involved with however there are facilities such as a gym at an onsite hotel that we can all use as well as an internal social networking site we can use as it’s an easy way to communicate between departments and to give praise for good work.

Yes

I used to work for MAG airports previously as a security officer and I feel like the company has a lot to offer especially with job security as it is always expanding but the management have always looked after me and done a very good job of accommodating me within their business.

Be ready to work, especially shifts as they can be hard to get used too to start with but other than that just be yourself, as long as you’re hard working you’ll fit right in and get along with most of the people that already work there, also ask around current employees for advice.