Apprentice Laboratory Technician Review

My role during this apprenticeship was to assist with general laboratory technician duties such as setting out lab classes for University level students and cleaning them down after. I also helped ensure glassware was clean and that stock levels were good for laboratory consumables. I also ran through small experiments to ensure they were suitable for students to complete.

I have learned a huge amount of skills during this time, I am much more confident in myself and have learned a lot of scientific skills as well as communication skills. The job makes you very flexible when moving from team to team, so you learn to become more adaptable to different environments.

I did enjoy my programme, there were a lot of good parts. The support from the training provider did bring down my enjoyment significantly as they were not the most supportive. There are a lot of improvements needed for this programme, but they are addressing this which is brilliant.

The programme at the start could've been better organised in my experience, there was a lot of moving around which was hard when you are new to an organisation. This created a lot of miscommunication but towards the end things did resolve and now I am on a higher level, it is much better.

The employer was supportive of college work and did give a reasonable amount of time to do off the job training for the NVQ side. There could have been more support from the apprenticeship manager but I believe this has now been resolved.

The support was very poor from the training provider, the college definitely could have been more organised and helpful. I still managed to do well in my course, so I believe it is not entirely bad but could definitely do with more support in the future.

I do not believe it has made a real difference, there were parts that were helpful but overall it did not help me perform better. There was a lack of lab classes at the college so it did not really give me practical skills that I could use in my day to day job.

No, this is something that is being worked on though. There are Christmas events which is nice but it is very much a once a year thing and I believe there could be a lot more social activities in place.

Yes

Although this programme has had its downfalls, it has definitely shaped me into a better person and aided me in becoming more confident and mature. I am now studying a higher course which is much more suited to me and I am supported a lot more with this course.

Make sure you show that you are hardworking, the work pace is fast and you will need to be able to keep up with that. The teams are lovely and will accommodate to you if you let them!