Network Engineer Apprentice Review

I have been placed into a consumer facing customer fulfilment role, on a 4 on-4 off shift pattern, with 12 hour shifts. On a day-to-day basis, I take calls, web chats, or work tickets from customers experiencing faults with their home broadband service. There is little scope for any project work, and having tried to be involved with helping improve processes and make the team more efficient, I can only stress how much of a frustrating, uphill battle this is, and how limited the recognition for doing well is.

What I cannot fault the team for is the initial training to do the job role - it was comprehensive and to my style of learning, and thus I was able to quickly pick up many aspects of the job role itself, however, there is no real path for progression within the team. I have worked on creating and supporting our 2nd line with scripts and automations, most (if not all) of which has been done on my own time, as there is almost no time to get off phones to work on these sorts of projects and development. My team is now purely customer fulfilment, and though I am able to handle customer queries and fault find effectively, the job role is not challenging, and there is no scope to learn. The university course up to now is a waste of time - we receive 2x3 hour lectures every month, on the 3rd Friday of the month, and then get set essay assignments to complete. Without a challenging and engaging job role, the university portion is completely unrelated.

Unfortunately, I don't. I am beyond disappointed with the nature of the apprenticeship - I had conversations with multiple tenured members of my team when joining, whom suggested our intake was seen as "bums on seats", and that they had no idea about anything apprenticeship related (e.g. university days, etc). The team is not technical, and cannot be stretched into the definition of a network engineering team, especially considering some reviews seen on here that suggest some quite high level networking projects. I am faced with repetitive issues on an anti-social shift pattern, that has drastically affected my mental health. I can confidently say that members of my team have been at times the only thing keeping me of sound mind, and as someone ambitious, it has felt as if all ambition and life has been sucked out of me, despite trying consistently to strive for a better experience.

It isn't at all. I applied for the role in January 2021, and received my offer and first contract on 16/04/2021. This contract stated "network engineer apprentice", "37.5 hour working week" (9-5) and "Based in Newbury HQ". Fast forward to 10/08/21, and I am issued a second contract, which has now had me moving to a fully work from home role. This was just over a month before we were due to start in our position, and I had travelled to Newbury and put an offer in on a property to rent - luckily this fell through the day before I was informed of this WFH change. On 17/09/2021, we first met with our line manager, and this is when we were first made aware that we would be working on a shift pattern as discussed earlier - the contract for this was then issued on 14/10/2021, after we had started and began training. My concerns have been raised with my line manager, apprentice manager, and BPOCs, with a meeting taking place in November first outlining the concerns of myself and members of my team. We are now 8 months into the program and I'd struggle to say that any of our concerns have been addressed appropriately. A short note on the university - their communication with VF is poor, and VF-VF communication is poor. The apprenticeship is not understood and it seems many higher-ups in VF aren't willing to adapt or compromise for the progression of the apprentices.

Most of my development post-training has come from my own learning. I've had time scheduled with our 2nd line to look at some projects which in many cases has been pulled at the last minute because of a small call queue. There is little interest in supporting the apprentices in progression, and I have found that my line manager has become defensive at times when raising concerns - this has led me to essentially give up the pursuit of trying to improve the situation, because it is extremely disheartening and my current experience has shown that nothing appears to be changeable.

I generally struggle to focus on the degree part of the apprenticeship due to my disillusion with the job role itself - the job role is 75% of our time, and the reason that I applied for an apprenticeship, to train on the job. The university seem disinterested with the job portion, and I have found that there is little co-operation and involvement from them generally. Some lecturers so far have been quite good, and some thrown in at the last minute, clearly disinterested.

A network engineering degree is useless in a first line technical support role with no real avenues for progression. It is a waste of time to study a degree that has no reflection on the job role - I have raised this and there is absolutely no interest in resolving it.

Since joining the role, I have not been able to attend any of the Vodafone Youth calls or events - I have been told by a higher-up before that these are pointless and a waste of time, however this attitude doesn't surprise me since it is a battle to get mandatory time for training and development anyway. Networking would be great but the job role in an understaffed call centre is not an accommodating environment for eager apprentices.

No

We were sold a dream, however it never came into fruition. It has been a nightmare that has very poorly affected my mental health and the mental health of many on my team. We may have pulled the short straw in terms of department, however, the fact that absolutely nothing has been done to assist us in improving our situation from VF (or the university when I spoke to them about my concerns) makes me believe that the efforts are wasted. We were purely seen as an intake of 10 agents who can answer phones for a struggling department. It is not a technical role in the slightest, and the job has been completely mis-sold.

The application process when I applied consisted of submitting a CV and answering a few questions, followed by a recorded video of me answering some questions, and then an assessment centre, which had some group and individual tasks, and an interview. I worry that it is purely luck of the draw as to the department you are placed into as there are some really great people within the company. If you're not happy with your situation when joining, query it from the very start, through managers or BPOCs if you believe you're getting nowhere. Good luck if you do go for it.