Software Engineering Apprentice Review

My role on my current project involves being the PMO UK Onshore Lead for a programme. The client is a large telecommunications company and I work with an onshore and offshore team of PMO Accenture employees to work together to ensure responsibilities of the account, at a programme level, are being met. A typical day includes catching up with the Accenture team first thing in the morning, where each programme onshore lead gives their respective update for the day. Following this I would go my own way to engage with the client project managers in meetings that day to ensure that their project plans are updated and ran through, budgets are being challenged/prompted to validate, programme review board decks are ready, change requests are raised, POs are raised, month end finances discussed and change board meetings are presented and changes discussed.

I’ve learnt and developed lot of skills during my time with Accenture. These include soft skills and hard skills. My analytical skills are being developed everyday, for example, in recent weeks I presented a number of automation options to the client whereby I presented different solutions to automate a process and at the beginning of the call I added a slide that compared the functionality of the tools against compatibility, cost, security, training and more. Another set of skills I have developed, and am continuously developing, are my communication skills. These range from professional communication skills such as presenting skills, writing professional emails to the client to understanding when to raise an issue with your manager, effective communication within your team to get work done and even networking skills at events. Hard skills include things like Agile, Project Management, Business Analysis, Change Management, Intermediate Excel, PowerPoint, Project, VBA, Powershell, SQL, Java, Python and more!

I’m nearing the end of my programme and I love it. When I compare myself to the person I was at the beginning I’m so happy I chose Accenture for this professional journey. I feel like, with the training and support you receive, you’re moulded into a great working professional early on. I’ve worked on some great accounts with fantastic, friendly and clever team members, transformed my skill set and and even made some great friends along the way.

This is the only area where I can retrospectively state that the structure could have been better defined for our intake. However, I do feel like this is improving and any ambiguities are being clarified. The improvement points for me would be better engagement from the university and Accenture and Accenture having more visibility over the amount of work/effort you put into your projects and the level of responsibility you own.

I receive a lot of support from my employer. Depending on the issue, I can reach out to my line manager (manager on my project), the HR team, my career councillor, project team members and fellow Accenture apprentices!

The support is all their you just need to utilise it. You can receive support from university lecturers, university library staff, fellow university students and apprentices. This can range from staying behind after lectures to ask your questions to setting up meetings with your lecturer. I’ve had some great lecturers and I’ve found that overall they were very understanding of the time management pressure we were under at university (whilst juggling project work and uni work).

I feel like my degree has given my the technological background I needed to confidently start my career as a PM/BA. Not be beginning of the degree I was picking up bits of information form both project and uni that helped each side but now I feel like I have all the grounding I need to set off.

Yes, over the past 3 years I’ve planned multiple social events for my teams, where I’m given an approximate budget and can explore event ideas, present them to my supervisor and then book them for our team. One of my highlights being an event at The Natural History Museum! I’m also involved in additional HR activities, promoting the scheme and unfortunately the only sport I am any good at is horse riding (and Accenture don’t have a team.. yet) so at the moment my colleagues are encouraging me to join early Zumba, Spinning and Yoga classes that Accenture offers.

Yes

I think it’s a fantastic platform to kickstart your career. You have everything you need to succeed, so provided that you want to, you’ll receive loads of support, develop tons of new skills, work with some amazing, clever colleagues on high-value consulting projects and have a great time at the social/sporting events whilst doing so! Great for expanding your skill set, knowledge and network.

Be enthusiastic about technology, really try get across your passion for it. Read Gartner articles, blogs, Accenture stories, tell the HR team what you’re interested in from those! And really try to portray how eager you are to learn. From what I experienced the HR team didn’t necessarily want someone who was already made but someone who had a genuine passion for technology, who had the foundation skillset to improve, was very eager to learn and eager work alongside brilliant employees!