Commercial Apprentice Review

I am a project-manager and my day varies all the time. I pull together various departments to ensure we are on track to meeting deadlines and launching projects on the anticipated date in order to meet range-reviews and get out products in stores. I deal with a range of innovations/renovations and recipe changes as well as smaller artwork projects.

Yes I have learnt a lot of organisational and time-management skills as well as how to have authority and influence others to ensure they do not overlook deadlines etc. This authority is key to have as a project manager as being a younger and lower-level employee it is easy for others to overlook you and think they can get away with not doing things for you that they otherwise do for other people (e.g., higher level team-members).

I have enjoyed my programme, but I think there are some improvements to be made. Having more contact with each other as apprentices would be beneficial, for example through calls with the academy where we are all brought together, but for useful purposes instead of for no reason would be good and offer support.

Within our roles, well organised, but the scheme itself is not so well managed. There have been numerous occasions where employees have turned up on their 1st day and had no team to go to, with no one expecting them to be arriving and there are continually issues with managers and teams not being aware of the protocol for apprentices, e.g., not understanding the 20% off the job learning requirement, not understanding we aren't allowed to work whilst at uni etc. These issues have been highlighted to the academy on numerous occasions and could easily be solved by either general training across the business on what apprentices do and require, and a standardised deck of how to manage an apprentice, or onboarding sessions before an apprentice joins a team, with their line-manager and anyone else who wants to join to ensure they're fully aware of what they're signing up to by employing an apprentice, as this is different from employing a standard employee.

This varies from role to role but is usually very good. There have been a couple of occasions where I feel the line-manager could've been more supportive, not necessarily by providing more tools but by being there for me for a longer period of time to ensure that I could develop my skills through repetition until I was able to confidently finish tasks myself. I think impatience here caused a lack of support and while I understand it is time-consuming

Not too much, they seem to keep work and university fairly separate with slight overlap when 3 way reviews happen and sponsors are needed for university projects. Line managers don't have much interaction with uni work but mentors can support where needs be (although their interaction feels disconnected and is quite irregular).

Overall, I think any skills that are developed during uni are also used within work and vice versa. There are not many skills that I think are specifically better than previously just because of the qualification, but reflection could be one as we have done a lot of this within uni which we don't necessarily do within work.

Nestlé don't specifically have extra-curriculum activities e.g., sports teams or clubs which I think could be beneficial to employees, especially apprentices who are trying to connect with more young employees. The gym is the closest thing and I personally don't like working out at work or around work colleagues.

Yes

The company have several benefits and treat their employees very well. There are some negatives of being in such a large organization such as a lack of connection through all employees as I only know people I have worked with frequently very well. Overall, I would definitely continue to work for Nestlé.

Be yourself. Ensure that you let your personality shine and show that you are confident and more than capable of doing a good job. Your academic capability is not as important as being a unique individual who will add to the organization and be able to bring something to the table.