HR Apprentice Review

As an HR apprentice, my day to day activities within my role vary, but I mostly focus around administrative tasks such as setting up casual workers on our internal HR system, doing right to work checks as well as monitoring inboxes. I also am involved within the recruitment process at my workplace and therefore I am involved in drafting job descriptions, creating interview timetables and working collaboratively with interview panel members and line managers.

I have learnt several new skills since starting my apprenticeship. The ability to work as part of the recruitment process has definitely given me new skills in how to draft job descriptions, work collaboratively with line managers as well as developing my organisational and scheduling skills required for making sure that interviews run smoothly. I have also improved my communication skills as well as my confidence as I speak to a variety of staff and academics daily.

I greatly enjoy the programme that I am on as I believe that it is giving me important skills that I can take with me into future roles and is helping me to develop my career. I am also enjoying it as it is helping me to gain a better understanding of what I would like to do for a future career, such as go more into wellbeing.

My programme is very well structured; I have weekly meetings with my line manager about my progress and to see how I am doing. These meetings also act as a way of teaching me about new skills or tasks that I am asked to complete. I also have 3 monthly meetings with my training provider to track my progress and to ensure that what I am doing at work is translates into relevant learning material for my apprenticeship.

I receive a huge amount of support from my employer, for which I am very grateful for. I feel greatly looked after and feel as if they are actively supporting me with my progress on a daily basis. Whilst there have been some challenges, these have been overcome with a great level of support from my colleagues which has helped my development and skill progression.

I receive some support from my training provider when working towards my qualifications, mostly regarding questions that I have about the course content or how to course will be structured. I have regular progress reviews with my learning provider to track my progress, which does a good job at making sure what I am being shown at work and being taught at college are relevant and are helping me to develop skills.

I feel that my qualification from my training provider provides a good foundation of knowledge for me to perform and understand better within my role at work. It gives me the understanding to know why tasks such as recruitment and payroll are important to get right, and how these can affect the wider business of where I work. Without it, I would definitely be worse off.

There are several different extra-curricular activities that are promoted within my workplace, with a few happening on a weekly occurrence. We have also had a few team networking events and apprenticeship networking events as well which have been very helpful at getting to know my team but also fellow apprentices within my organisation.

Yes

The University of Oxford is a great employer, and one that will make you feel like you are truly valued by them throughout your apprenticeship. They offer great support and wage whilst being accommodating to your needs. I also feel like I am in a great position for when my apprenticeship ends, through having a good amount of experience working within the University to be able to find a similar role within it, for which I plan on doing as a result of my excellent experience so far.

Definitely go for it! Make sure to include lots of details about why you think that this apprenticeship is right for you and how it interests you, as well as matches your career goals. Think about what skills you might want to develop and and new skills you want to learn, and then how these might be best suited to being on an apprenticeship at the university.