Apprentice Mechanical Engineer Review

The work varies from placement to placement where in different placements you'll learn new things. In one placement you might be doing a lot of CAD, another you might be looking at health and safety. Currently there is little work overall as an office but as an apprentice there are things to be getting on with.

I have learnt a lot of skills over the past 7-8 months especially in CAD. I have learnt to use the software at a high level as well as some of the other crucial things such as how and where to store models on the computer so that other can access and edit it if they need to or to view to use it as part of their model.

I enjoy the programme but there is a lot of things this site needs to sort out to get it up to standard. The first few weeks had little organisation and the communication between HR and this site was poor. In terms of work, the programme is enjoyable as you have the choice in what you want to do.

The structure and organisation of this quite poor. Other sites have much better schemes, much better pay, a lot more funding and receive a better education from their institution which puts us at a disadvantage which I believe is a massive failure as a company. The first few weeks was appalling in that nothing was set up and nobody really knew what was going on.

I support received is very good. However there is little they can do resolve many of the problems as it is their bosses who make the decisions. A big thing is the lack of funding from this site which is my biggest concern about the future of my time here.

I receive a good level of training for the standard of institution we go to however I believe the company needs to re-consider the training provider and look at much better accredited institutions. Again, other sites get accredited from top 10 providers whereas this site does not have the funding.

The qualification has little impact on my role. That's not to say that the training received won't be useful, it may be useful to say that you have that qualification despite having little impact on the role you work on. So I believe it is useful but does not help perform better.

I take part in football which is with work colleagues and tennis as well. However there is no other networking events or social activities that really happens. Due to the lack of apprentices, it depends on more who you make friends with and whether they are sociable. In this place there are very few and all live in different directions so it is often difficult.

Yes

Yes but I would not recommend them to come to this site especially if they are moving house. This site does nothing to help starters who are not living at home which is another failure of the business. I hope this will change in the future and funds/pay is increased to equivalent of other apprentices from other sites as I believe it is unfair.

Choose the site you apply to wisely. I would recommend air or maritime. They are very well funded sectors of the company and very well organised. The qualifications, education, pay and support is also at a higher standard. They have many more applicants and apprentices so there are plenty of networking opportunities there.