Digital Degree Apprentice Review

Currently I am in my year long industrial placement within the automation & robotics department. My day to day role is as a developer where I work within an agile framework on projects in a 2 weekly sprint cycle. We have daily stand up meetings and work within the team to accomplish all targets set at the beginning of a sprint via user stories and bugs to fix.

I have been working with a low code application called Pega which was completely new to me when I initially started in September. I have now become quite used to developing in Pega and am able to work on stories independent of most help. Also my soft skills have developed in remote working as part of a single team and within the larger department too.

I enjoy my work now in the programme quite a lot. To start with it was a bit slow with having to get trained up on Pega as it was completely new and I was not able to shadow enough people at the start, however my time this year so far has become much more enjoyable and fulfilling with harder work pushing me to do better.

At the beginning of the placement year we were trained up on the framework of how work is delivered, however when it came to training on Pega it was much more self guided which could have been supplemented with occasional on-the-job training to speed up the grasp of the type of work we would be doing. Now though I feel I have my feet under me in the role with weekly catch up meetings to track progress with freedom to bring up ideas of how I can further myself within my role.

There is a lot of support from the employer, both in the placement year and during studies at university. They are always only an email away when studying, and during placement I can easily reach out to my line manager or the apprentice coordinator with any concerns or questions at all.

My university is very supportive with working towards my qualification. I have a personal tutor who is involved in tripartite meetings with my employer and regular meetings as a tutor group. There is good welfare support and the lecturers are mostly helpful in teaching modules that contribute to my final qualification.

My qualification of a computer science degree is very helpful within my role as a developer. I was not at all familiar with Pega, but once I understood how similar ideas transferred from other types of programming I found it easier to grasp the ideas and found doing the work became easier once the pieces fit into place.

My employer has a wide variety of groups that I can take part in. We have an internal 'social media' where people regularly share posts of upcoming events and engage in discussions on recent news. There are a variety of professionals networks on the site too that allow people to feel represented within the company.

Yes

I would recommend Vodafone to a friend as an employer because they offer a wide variety of engaging work that keeps me busy and involved day to day. They are a very supportive employer and I feel that I can always raise concerns or ideas that I have and learn from my suggestions and mistakes to progress my personal development and motivate myself.

Vodafone is a great employer to work for and you shouldn't feel nervous in the process as from beginning to end I was kept up to date and informed of my progress. It is always good to read around the company to have an idea of how they work to know if it is the right fit for you and to see the great things the company does and that you can be a part of.