IM&T Advanced Apprentice Review

As an advanced apprentice, I go to college every Monday (during school terms) to learn about Systems Analysis/Design and Web development. In work hours I do work in my placement, I change placements every 3/6 months and it allows me to move around IM&T and get a better understanding of what IM&T do as a whole and how the different departments effect different things. I am currently in my 2nd placement, this placement allows me to move around different sites in the business and understand a lot of what the team does. Overall my apprenticeship builds my confidence and communication skills and my day-to-day work allows me to have a broad understanding of the business.

Personally, I believe I have learnt confidence and communication skills from applications like skype and other meetings. My confidence has grown massively due to the drastic change of atmosphere, at school (as students should be) I was treat like a child but here in the workplace, specifically BAE, I feel like I'm being treat equally and fairly. Everyone is friendly and a helping hand no matter what age and I prefer it. I also feel like during this apprenticeship I have developed my organisation skills from planning meetings to planning when college work should be done etc. This is helpful for me in the future as it will help me be more prepared for future events in and out of work.

From someone who came in the business straight from school, I am really enjoying my apprenticeship. Everyone is very friendly and welcoming and I enjoy the different work that BAE has to offer. In all the placements I've been in so far I have been welcomed as part of the team and treat like a colleague rather than an apprentice. All the other apprentices if they're either a graduate, higher, intermediate or advanced treat me like a friend and include me like they've known me for years. I am very happy with my choice of an apprenticeship as I am really enjoying it.

Overall I would say the apprenticeship scheme is structured and organised ok, however I expected factors such as college to be organised before my arrival into the business which they weren't. I had to organise mine and the other new starts college day myself by getting in touch with college and pushing early careers to start the process. We started college without a problem and everything was fine but I have been told by other apprentices that they had similar experiences. All other aspects of the apprenticeship is very well organised and runs smoothly and overall I would say the programme is structured well.

As an advanced apprentice in BAE I don't have an employer, however I do get support from early careers, college tutors and placement managers. All of these give amazing support if I'm ever stuck, in trouble or need any help. Early careers support my career all through my apprenticeship, offering mental health talks, monthly catch up meetings to see how we are doing and one to ones with a member of early careers to talk to us personally and create a chance for us to raise any concerns in private. College provide a 12 weekly review where they tell us how we are doing in college and ask us if college is being helpful to us. We get a chance to talk about our classes and any other work that is college based (e.g. NVQ and Off The Job), it's a good chance to raise any problems with college. Our placement managers are there to help with any questions while we are on a placement, they can answer any questions for us no matter how stupid or silly. Overall as an apprentice I receive a lot of amazing support from multiple areas.

I would say that college and early careers represent as my training providers and both give good support. As I mentioned before someone from college meet us every 12 weeks to tell us how we are progressing and to say what we can do to improve, college treat us like full time college students to ensure we get the best we can in our qualifications. Early careers support us by allowing college work to be done in work hours and allowing us to go to college if need be (if we are behind on any work or need to catch up on anything). I would say the support as an apprentice I get for my qualifications is really good. The only bad feedback I would give is relating to setting college up in the first place, I believe we didn't start classes in college till mid-November time when we were meant to start September.

The classes I do include systems analysis, systems design and web development (at the moment) also we have an NVQ and Off the Job hours which contribute to the apprenticeship. These classes take place once a week and Furness College provide them. I feel that my classes leading up to my qualification are important as they provide extra knowledge for us, the things we learn in college can go towards our Off the Job hours and overall the stuff we learn in college could be helpful in some placements because if you are in a technical role such as SharePoint, web development can be useful for you.

Yes, within BAE Systems one extra-curricular activity apprentices can get involved in is STEM activities. For this you can visit primary and secondary schools and do activities such as explaining how we got into an apprenticeship within the company. Also we can do experiments relating to submarines and many more. There are also talks to get involved in, for example mental health awareness is a big one. During these talks you can either get involved by hosting the talks or joining in by speaking, if you aren't comfortable with speaking to an audience you can just watch and take notes while others speak about theirexperiences or ways to help. There are other extra-curricular activites to get involved in and BAE offer a wide selection for every apprentice.

Yes

BAE offer amazing experiences and opportunities for young people. As a school-leaver, going into BAE was a huge step which I am glad I took. As an advanced apprentice at the age of 16 my confidence has boosted and I have become more social, everyone in the business is very friendly and welcoming and I have met lots of new people who I can say I'm now friends with. For me BAE was a big difference from school and overall provided me with lots of new skills and a change for the better. To conclude, I would recommend an apprenticeship with BAE Systems because it opens up lots of opportunities and boosts confidence.

First of all, when applying try to include all experiences. For example if you did DofE and along the way you experienced an argument or you got lost, say this and mention how you overcame it. Ths is a perfect way to show that you had a problem and you effectively overcame it and moved on. If you get to the interview process the best advice I can give is to be yourself, be confident in your answers and revise basic knowledge on BAE Systems, this shows how you seem genuinely interested in the company. Overall when applying to BAE Systems, the best advice I can give you is to be confident and not only list your strengths but also list when you had to face a certain problem and worked to overcome it.