Tech Degree Apprentice Review

I worked in the UKIT team in Belfast during my placement. This involved developing software for Microsoft Hololens. We were tasked specifically with making a Showcase which could be brought out to roadshows, careers fairs etc. that would show off the various aspects of UKIT. Myself and another Apprentice enjoyed our time here and produced a working demo.

I developed many new skills during my work placement at PwC in the UKIT team. Specifically, I had attended an Agile Training event which further developed my Scrum knowledge. Along with this, I dabbled in Google AppScript to work on a few side projects other than our main one. Finally, I learnt some new Hololens development skills also.

I very much enjoyed my placement here in the Belfast Office. I was there for 10 weeks, working with the UKIT team was very rewarding for me. The people on my team were always friendly, helpful and never turned you away if you had any queries or questions needing answered.

As this is the first year of the programme, I expected it to be less organised compared to other, older programmes that have experience in running these schemes. However in saying that, I haven't had an issue with any of the plans in place and as we are the first group, we have a lot of input on how our programme runs.

Throughout the year, we have had many contact points during our University term time. However, most of the support received has been made during our placement. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as PwC wasn't too overbearing throughout our term time. Any questions I had was swiftly answered via email if I did need anything.

Queen's University of Belfast's Computer Science Department has been especially helpful throughout the University term time. With many various support classes on top of our normal lectures and practicals. For example, our Programming lecture had many additional classes to help us with any problems that we faced. Overall, very good.

For my peers who are not on the HLA, they may just be going back home and working some summer job in a shop or something, but we have been given relevant experience to the course that we are studying. As a result, I feel better prepared to go back into 2nd year of university and further develop my software engineering skills.

During the Digital DNA event based in Northern Ireland which brings various tech companies together, I took the opportunity to volunteer at the PwC stand, showing interested parties the various VR\AR. I was interviewed by the Digital DNA's media team, talking about the tech apprenticeship scheme and was also involved in a recruitment video to promote the tech apprenticeship degree which was used by our local PwC recruitment team in a recent social media recruitment campaign.

Yes

It has been great to experience the student life during the two semesters and now that first year is finished, it’s brilliant to keep doing something relevant until next year. I am also excited for the second year of university, if first year was anything to go by then I will enjoy it extremely! My biggest challenge in first year was programming, coming from a background with very little programming experience. I feel confident now in my abilities and I am willing to develop them further. Anyone wishing to study Software Engineering at Queen's would be missing out if they did not apply for this scheme.

Be willing to work well in a team, communicate your ideas, be generally approachable. People skills are by far more important than your technical ones, as they can be developed. If you do this, you will be opening yourself up to opportunities. All in all however, it's most important that you have fun!