Manufacturing Technical Apprentice Review

My role involves a plethora of different placements where you go around the different departments within the company to gain experience and an appreciation for all the job roles within the business, from here we can hone our skills and specialise in a certain area that we desire. Each couple months is different from the rest as we get to get involved in different activities and gain an expansive understanding of how we operate

I have learnt new practical skills as prior to working I had not done much for physically building products, from a more business perspective I have become much more confident and approachable as my general skillset is improving whilst jumping from placement to placement. As I improve in general and develop all my pre existing skills it transfers to my confidence as I am more comfortable talking about projects due to being able to back it up with knowlede and expertise

I enjoy my program more than I feel I would enjoy it anywhere else, of course it is not perfect however they give a lot of opportunities for us to get involved with whether that is regarding charity or STEM so it breaks the flow of work with external activities. The work is also interesting (in my opinion) and generally it is not monotonous which keeps it fun without getting boring. There are exclusions as not every day will be perfectly exciting however that is what comes with work

Provided our college was not so horrendously bad, it would be run very well. This is not the fault of the company however the colleges inability to hire actual tutors and their unwilling to change and make our course better. From a company point of view, there are minimal problems and they offer lots for us to do outside of our placements. As well as this they are generally quick to respond to questions we have to help the apprenticeship run as smoothly as possible

Whenever we need anything generally it can get solved very quickly. Due to the nature of our business there are some things that take extra time to be security cleared etc however that is not something that can always get done instantly. There is a team of people who are always willing to help and do help whenever they can, so this is something I appreciate

The general attitude with our training provider is that they dont care for the wellbeing or progress of their students. There is rarely a tutor that does truly care and the majority of the time the lessons do not involve teaching of any sorts and we are left to our own devices, not to mention not having a teacher for about a month as the previous teacher left without a replacement. We have had to push the company to complain to them as our (us students) complaints do not get through to them or have any sort of impact on how we learn

The college work we do is almost completely irrelevant to the work that we do, it has made me perform better in my role by making me appreciate how nicely work is run in comparison to the training provider, therefore I can appreciate work more and it makes me want to work harder knowing I have to go back to the training provider

There are so many extra-curricular activities to get involved in at work, we have heaps of STEM/charity events. To name a few, we partake in IMechE's automation challenge, visit many schools for talks and mentoring, prior to covid we did charity football matches, cycles and more. Also there are many opportunities to network as we opted in to some awareness schemes which involve many companies and we can go to networking events there to get ourselves known to all sorts of people within different companies

Yes

This is a respected apprenticeship with lots of area for improvement as a worker and as a person, you are thrown activities to partake in every week and you are not limited to what you want to do, personally I try to get involved with everything and I feel it is invaluable experience as I have developed so much as a person over the last (almost) 2 years.

Make sure to have something you are proud of that you can show off to your employers, assure you have a deep understanding of it and be confident in what you speak about during interviews. If it is applying for an apprenticeship, they will not expect you to have all the answers as that is what an apprenticeship is all about, talk about what you know, not what you think you know