Apprentice heavy vehicle technician Review

My day to day role is working with a mentor completing various maintenance, repair or service tasks on a range of military vehicles. Housekeeping tasks and other jobs around the workshop that need completing are occasionally included.

I have developed my tool handling skills, health and safety skills, and technical knowledge of the vehicles that I work on.

I enjoy the challenge of different tasks set out for me and the college learning experience. Working in the different areas of the company i also enjoy as working with different mentors helps to get to know more and people and learn from their experience.

The structure is quite poor. There's not a lot of correlation between what work is done in the workshop and the learning that is completed at college due to the nature of the job. Apprentice support at work isn't great and very badly organised especially on apprentice rotations.

There is plenty of support from the mentors, but when when it comes to support through immediate managers this is poor and issues rarely get resolved. Support with personal issues is good and the general attitude towards supporting apprentices is to pass the problem to someone else.

There is plenty of support from the training provider and are happy to help when it is requested. Any problems are usually quickly resolved.

The training that is provided is definitely the most beneficial part of the apprenticeship and is pivotal to progressing in the workshop. The majority of the information learnt is from the training provider and is often put in to practice in the workshop on a day to day basis.

We completed an outdoor activity week in our first year and there is a Christmas social event every year.

Yes

I would recommend them because it has a very relaxed working environment and the college experience provided by the training provider is very good.

Advice I would give is to do some research on the company and what they do, and also to ask plenty of questions about the job as the job titles can be very misleading.