Higher Apprentice- Leadership & Management Review

The nature of the apprenticeship is that you change job role every 6-9 months on the programme to gain a wealth of experience and get to know different areas of the business. You'll naturally start at a lower level ( a small stint on the phones/ in branch) but by year 2 can be expecting to be working alongside Team leaders and AVPs in the business, and not directly speaking to customers. By year 3 where i am now, you get to see a high level oversight when it comes to your role. Currently mine is looking into performance of 3 of our main business areas. The finding of a new role is completely down to you, most areas jump at the chance as they will see you as a free resource to help with their workload.

Developed networking skills as well as leadership skills and qualities that would otherwise take a lot longer to build in a 'normal' role compared to this one which is accelerated . From a professional side of things, all the essential roles that you might need for a higher level role are available. From the university perspective, you learn applied knowledge and theories when you attend your study blocks. There are many internal training courses that you can attend, these can be for a variety of skills, such as developing leadership skills, to new ways of learning, to getting better at using excel.

The overall programme - you don't get much support from a Barclays standpoint, you're expected to just get on with things, we get told one thing and another one materialises. My cohort are the last year of these apprentices, and so feel as if we are being abandoned by the business, we'll be expected to find roles that are suitable for us, however with a job freeze on, the odds of finding suitable jobs for 20+ people per year are low.

Barclays POV- It is not organised well, at one point we were told we'd be having quarterly catch ups with a director, this was 18 months ago and we've had one. We were introduced to people at our induction who said they'll keep us updated and we haven't heard from them since. Anglia Ruskin POV - very well organised, professional however are expected to complete many additional tasks which aren't really ever mentioned such as building your portfolio to pass, which is entirely down to you, originally we had support from tutors to map our assignments on a poor system in OneFile, however since 2nd year it's been down to ourselves.

From my immediate manager who has been on the programme themselves - excellent, he understands the pressures and strains we have to work under. We get a personal career coach for the whole cohort, where we meet every 2 months for about 15 minutes which feels much more like a tick box exercise from Barclays to say the support has been in place. The support is there if you need it, which may come through alternative contacts to the actual route you're supposed to follow, as you'll speak to the people that know you best.

We get allocated personal tutors which aid with guidance for portfolio completion, they are always there to support you should you need it, such as requiring an extension although never having one myself. In the 2nd year it's very left to yourself to map your own assignments and produce additional work towards your portfolio, and it utilises a poorly designed system called OneFile, which feels inadequate and too complex for what is essentially uploading documents and ticking the boxes it applies to.

I don't see much of the learns from Uni translate into the job role, it can if you're looking at change and transformation, but i rarely put theory into practise - i may use a gantt chart from time to time, but i would've just googled one anyway and so don't see any translation of methods between the two sides of the programme. i don't feel as if the job roles we complete have much to do with our learnings at uni

The business have pulled some key social activities that i'm told everyone looked forward to where a whole region would come together for a ball. We still get christmas nights out, although the money allocated per person keeps reducing year on year. It's just like any other workplace and therefore isn't specific to our apprenticeship, you just have less time to make your mark on a role and meet friends and new people

No

If you get into the right team,the culture is amazing and supportive. If you're coming in as an apprentice, you're quickly taught that it's not what you know it's indeed who you know, which is how many people get onto the programme. We're taught to 'network' which is just a cover up for this culture that is in place on knowing the right people rather than on actual merit of your ability

Very hard to get on to, if successful you'll complete competency tests, then be invited to an assessment day where you'll be put through many observations that don't seem obvious at first. You'll go through a group discussion where one of the maangers will specifically observe you. You'll be discussing a task with the others, which you will individually present to a 'stakeholder' later on, it's likely to do with budgeting etc. I'd say make the most of it if you get the job, it's a great thing to have on your CV.