mechanical engineering apprentice Review

My job role is mechanical maintenance within the departments at fawdon factory. I am with a technician daily and this carry on for 3 months in each department. I may get projects to do within the departments such as making moderfications to a machine, however if there are no projects, I carry out daily maintenance checks with the technicians and report to any breakdowns there may be on shift.

From beginning my apprenticeship, I feel I have learnt a lot. When i started in my first year, i didn't even know what 'Swarf' was, and now I can carry out many tasks on various machines such as turning and milling and produce something to a high standard.

When coming into work, I sometimes don't know what tasks I will be involved in, this makes every day different and therefore isn't repetitive and this makes it enjoyable as well as the tasks I am involved in. The other apprentices (3rd year and 1st year) are easy to get along with and this also makes the apprenticeship enjoyable. This apprenticeship has passed my expectations and I fully enjoy working at Nestle.

I feel very valued by Nestle, when i have recieved rewards from training providers, it hasn't gone un-recognised, I have recieved vouchers/Reward points on the rewards system and been congradulated on many occasions by both managers and technicians around the factory.

The training we recieve at Nestle is top class, from year 1, we are at Rolls Royce training centre completing our PEO units on Milling, Turning, Welding, Fabrication and hand fitting. These are all at level 2. Once we came to the factory, we regularly practise these skills from jobs given by technicians. Also the studying we do is helped by having a training room where we can go on a friday to complete log books/complete work based project theory work. We have mentors on site that can help us with any college work we may need a hand with and this helps us on occasions.

We recieve a lot of support from our training provider. If we have any questions we dont hesitate to ask as they are happy to help. I thouroughly enjoyed it.

As well as support at college for our coursework, we have tutors on site that can give us a hand if we run into any problems. Our manager is always happy to help and he is always quick to solve any problems we may have. Any problems we may have within the factory, we have a numerous number of people we can see to solve them problems.

The salary we are on at nestle is great! From leaving school and going into an apprenticeship, I didn't think i would be on this much within the short amount of time i have been at the factory.

There are always company events/activities going on throughout the year which we can get involved in such as visits to other factories. There is a gym on site at Fawdon and it only costs £5 per month for a membership which is very cheap considering we dont have to travel to the gym as it is at work.

Yes

I would fully recommend Nestle to a friend as it has given me a great experience into engineering and has given me high quality training such as allowing me to get good qualifications which will help me in the future if i want to progress in the Engineering industry within Nestle or if i wanted to explore other areas of Engineering.

For the interview, be yourself. It is formal but if you can have a laugh it relaxes you and the interviewer can see the real you rather than sitting there and being nervous. In my assesment in the interview, i had a guide how to complete a task, i read this for 10 minutes and took all the time i was allowed, i would recommend doing this as i was alot clearer how to complete the task after going over it a few times.