Engineering Degree Apprentice Review

I am at University for 2 days a week, which is usually not too intense and just involves turning up to lectures / labs and acting like a normal student. For the other three days, I turn up to work at around 9am and will stay until 5:30/6pm, but I am not strictly monitored for how long I work. My role is in engineering so I provide technical support maintaining and developing the applications used by the business side of the bank. The projects are not too intense and everybody is very cautious about ensuring you are not in out of your depth. The only negative I could think of in my day-to-day work is that not everybody fully understands what a degree apprentice is and so people may have very different ideas for how experienced they think you are. The amount of interaction you have with university students is completely up to the individual and I know some apprentices who have very little involvement, compared to others who are very involved with societies and clubs.

I previously had a computing background at A Level (although most of my cohort did not) so I was able to start right away with coding whilst learning more complex topics. I have massively increased my technical skill in the short amount of time that I have been here. More importantly, I have learnt a lot about living away from home and how to push myself out there to meet more people. A main skill which I am still working on which is important for the scheme is being able to handle communications from many different directions. I have many requests from university, work and the heads of the apprenticeship scheme which all need to be prioritized and managed.

I am enjoying living away from home with a flatmate who is also on the same scheme (the offer holders day is a good way to find someone if you are looking to move out). The scheme allows me to have lots of free time during the weekends and university days (when not at lectures) whilst still ensuring that I'm not completely wasting my days sat inside on a computer or sleeping. I enjoy the responsibility and independence that comes with the job and living away from home.

There are still issues being ironed out with the communication between the different people who you have to interact with in the scheme. Like I said earlier, there is quite a large onus on the apprentice to be the hub between work, university and the apprenticeship managers. This is a good thing because it means that you can have the independence at work to interact with your team and be treated the same way as a normal employee. As well as this, if there are any issues within your team which you cannot take up with your manager - you have a lot of ports of call to resolve this. Previous apprentices are a good support network and can come in very useful at the start of the apprenticeship. However, I do think work could be done on increasing the amount of HR contacts as well as the training given in the first weeks (but this is constantly being improved upon).

The HR contacts are very useful for any questions about the scheme itself, but I do think that as the amount of apprentices increase - this team of support needs to increase with it and become more specialized. However, apprentices in previous generations are very helpful and I have an assigned buddy who is one of my first ports of clal for any questions about almost anything. For example, since I had moved down to London, I was able to get lots of advice on good social places (clubs etc.) as well as simple things like where to find a barber. My team is very helpful for any technical issues and there are lots of tutorials and seminars provided by the firm to learn about more topics.

I have very little involvement with any of the support networks within the university. This is mostly because I have not encountered any issues which would lead me to contact the university networks. Most of the modules I sit are with full time computer science students so the module organizers are not always aware that they have a small group of students who are working part time. This hasn't become an issue yet since if I have any issues with the content, I will access online resources or talk to other apprentices if it is a last resort.

Since I have come from a computing A-Level, the first semester of university is more of an introduction to technical concepts that I had already learnt previously. This allows me to exceed the topics taught at university with the things I do at work. There are the odd things which I have learnt at university but as a practical learner, I find it much easier to exceed at work, compared to the things at university.

I am involved with sport at the university, but little information about work sports and activities have been given to us. I do believe that there are things you can do with colleagues (5-aside etc.) but I have never thought to research into these as it seems like something where you need to know someone to be able to participate. I would recommend the university leagues and sports as it is nicer to have a different ground of friends who are full time students.

Yes

From interacting with apprentices from other friends, I would say that this scheme is one of the best ones out there. The company reputation can be quite daunting and I had stereotypes of who I expected to encounter here. However, everybody I have met have been friendly and down to earth. The job prospects at the end of the scheme are very good and the skills you can pick up from working in a professional environment are very useful. I had offers from other places before coming here, but I am very glad that this is the one that I chose.

Try to be yourself. I remember coming to my interviews and seeing the people who are acting completely fake and bloating about all the millions of achievements that they have done being 100% confident that they have got the job already. I can tell you that the people who have succeeded and who I am working with today are the most down to earth and we all agree that - although we were confident and expressed our achievements - we still brought our own personality into the interviews.