Project Management Degree Apprentice Review

My day-to-day tasks Include: Scheduling meetings. Creating and maintaining matrixes and spreadsheets, including producing reports on them. Engaging with key stakeholders creating process maps creating and developing SharePoint sites Attending University every Wednesday for my degree satisfying my 20% off the job requirement with uni work and work towards APM.

I have learnt many new skills throughout my time in the Scheme, mostly in learning about different software. The key software I have improved upon is: SAP Excell Sharepoint Outlook Visio PiaB In particular my Excell skills have developed drastically, learning how to create macros and how and when to use certain formulas, to improve the quality of the work I output.

I thoroughly enjoy my programme and being part of the business. The history behind the business is imbedded into the heart of the local community and i feel like I am making my mark. I am less enthusiastic about the academic portion of my apprenticeship as I am a "do'er" and quite a practical person, However, I understand it a necessary part of my career.

I trust the Early careers team and overall am happy with the way in which my programme has been ran to this point. However, with being the first year to test the new format of the scheme, there has been a few hiccups over the past 3 years and levels of confusion/miscommunication regarding the scheme and its structure, some of this is still going but EC are working hard to resolve this as to be expected with a new scheme.

The business is fully committed into supporting its apprentices and this can be seen from my personal account. The team at Early careers, creates a support tree for its apprentices to make sure that there is always someone to go to for assistance. when I have been struggling I have always been given the right support where needed and I am very grateful for this.

Support from our university tutors is always provided and additional 1 to 1 sessions can be booked for further information / questions. The tutors are very helpful and create a multitude of resources for us to explore and use to further our knowledge of subject areas. I am Dyslexic so this type of support is very important to me and the university have always provided me with extra time and access to a laptop for written work.

I believe this is difficult to quantify as I work in such a specialist field of work. so Projects and programmes are never really bog standard. However, a lot of similarities can be made between the academics of project management and the work i do, it is just harder to link them together. over all the degree still improves my project management knowledge overall, which intern helps me fulfil my role further.

As an apprentice year group we will often organise nights out and away days as a way to socialise and improve our working relationships. furthermore, we all attended 2 weeks at outward bout to further build these functional working relationships and increase out networking capability. STRETCH activities are regularly offered which offer a range of working projects to get involved in, often regarding engaging with the local community.

Yes

I would recommend joining the business to a friend as I have only encountered positive things since joining the business, I believe many people are passionate about the work we do in the business and that's not something you can say very often regarding work. I thoroughly enjoy my scheme and my role and I think my friends would too.

Dream big and jump into every opportunity offered to you. Go into placements with an optimistic mind set, as in my experience the placements that I have thought sounded boring, have more often then not been the highlights of my time with the business. My last tip would be to get to know the history of business as knowing this will better help you understand the business in todays date and spark that passion.