New Talent Apprentice Review

I am a web developer, working in a team with several other developers across two locations. Most of the development I do on a day to day basis is done in React, and pairing is encouraged within my team. I attend university one day a week, and spend the other four working days working on tickets within my team.

I have gained more confidence in my ability to work independently, contribute my own thoughts, opinions and experience when working with others, and gotten better at reading and understanding documentation in order to further my learning. I feel that I have become much more competent at trying new things when I may not have known what to do before, and become better at listening to others in order to gain a better understanding of work based on their own experiences.

I greatly enjoy working on my team, and feel that I am learning far better in an actual team than I would be if I had just gone to university. The workplace culture is very relaxed and positive, with plenty of opportunities to improve, try out new things, and move to new teams/departments/areas if it would be more beneficial. However, the study/university side of my course can cause frustration sometimes, taking me away from my usual day-to-day work in order to complete assignments that don't contribute directly to my team in a way that is visible and tangible to me.

Communication from the university started out rather poorly, but I feel that they are getting better at sending out emails, both to apprentices and employers. Induction was a quick and efficient process, and there are plenty of available training courses available for me to take whenever I feel the need to learn more about a certain topic. I feel confident speaking to my line manager to ask if I would like more opportunities to improve on a certain skill, and am happy with the amount of resources available to me in order to do this.

I have regular catch-up sessions in order to check my progress and identify areas of improvement. I feel that this works well, and concerns are always taken seriously. At work, I feel that I am treated equally as a part of the team. The working environment is very positive, and asking questions is encouraged - both from my managers, and from my fellow developers. Everyone is happy to help, and encourage me to ask as many questions as I can/need. Whenever I bring up issues, they are treated seriously by my line manager, and escalated as needed.

I have scheduled catch-up sessions with a skills coach from my service provider every quarter, and while I wish these were more frequent, they are very useful and the skills coach is very eager to listen and take action when required. I also have a supervisor in order to aid with some of my assignment work who I have organised to meet every two weeks, and I feel this benefits me a lot. Contact details for other members of staff are easy to find on my university portal, and members of staff tend to respond to emails promptly.

I do not feel that the work done in class with my training provider always directly helps me in my role, but it has helped me to gain confidence, and be able to learn in a less pressurised working environment at the same time as working on a real, production-quality product. I also feel that it provides me with an interesting overview on how other job roles in my team may work through an academic lens, and it has given me an opportunity to see what elements of my field appeal to me and which don't.

There are plenty of groups available to sign up to at work, such as club memberships and personal gatherings. Often at my organisation, teams will arrange to go out for team meals when a team member is moving, or participate in fun activities such as escape rooms in order to improve relations and socialise outside of a working environment. Company away days also tend to be every quarter, and while these usually have a primary focus of department goals and accomplishments, there is also a fun, social aspect in order to bring teams together.

Yes

I feel very welcomed in this organisation, and know that if I am not satisfied with my team or the opportunities available to me where I am, I will be able to discuss this with my line manager to get this resolved - whether by communicating this to others, showing me opportunities already available to me that I may not have noticed, or by moving me to another team/department altogether if that would be more beneficial. There is a very friendly, laidback attitude that has eased me into a working environment, and made me feel a lot less under pressure, especially since this is my first job.

The interview and assessment day were both done on the same day for me, and while I was very nervous about attending this, the environment once there was very relaxed, and the interviewers were very likeable. I feel that it's important to engage with the interviewers as much as possible and express eagerness for the opportunity, as well as for getting to know the teams. The working environment is very social, so being able to work well with others feels just as important as technical skills. Another important thing to remember is to ask questions when unsure, and vocalise when things aren't working out very well - these can be fixed very easily, but continuing to stay quiet about them won't help things at all. For a long period of time in my apprenticeship, I refused to move to a better team when the one I was on wasn't beneficial to me, and I feel that I missed out on a lot of learning opportunities because of this. Taking the step forward to state that I wanted things to change and that I thought it would be best to move changed the rest of my apprenticeship entirely, and I now feel that I am in a much better situation and am learning far more.