Combat Systems Degree Apprentice Review

Over the course of my apprenticeship I am completing 6 month placements in different areas of the business. This means that the teams I am in and the tasks I complete change for each placement. Currently I am working on tasks to learn more about networks while taking simpler tasks from other members in the team to allow them to work on higher priority tasks.

I have improved my communication skills as I have to make sure that I reach out to people if I am stuck with anything. I have also learnt about how teams are managed and work together in business to achieve their goals. I have also improved my management skills through a project I was asked to run.

I really enjoy the work side of the apprenticeship, I feel I am learning a lot and improving my confidence. Unfortunately the university side has been quite disorganised and they haven't really taught us anything which would actually help in our careers. It often seems like a waste of time attending university sessions.

It has been quite disorganised, that could be down to us being the first cohort to be doing this apprenticeship with this university, however it feels like there is a lack of communication of what we need to be doing to complete the apprenticeship. In work, it is a bit more organised, people are very proactive with organising placements.

I receive a lot of support, within placements, people are always available to help and answer questions if I don't understand something. I am also fortunate in that I know some people outside of placements who are helpful in providing other career advice and more knowledge about the company.

The university do provide support, we have an apprenticeship coach who is available to schedule one to one meetings to help with any questions or problems. The university is ensuring that we keep up to date with collecting the evidence required to achieve the qualification, however they aren't teaching us about the things which we need evidence for.

At present, the modules we have completed at university have no relevance to my role, however a couple of the modules have had some relevance to other specialisms' roles. In future we are supposed to be completing modules specific to our specialisms which hopefully will help me to perform better in my role.

There are apprentice social events that are organised to get involved in, and apprentices are able to organise and advertise their own through the monthly apprentice meeting we have. There are also stretch projects which can be joined where you have the opportunity to work with different people to achieve a goal separate to what is happening in your placement.

Yes

In the time that I have been working here, it has improved my confidence and I have learnt a lot about how cyber security is applied in business. Everyone I have met has been really nice and I feel safe to ask people questions to allow me to improve my knowledge.

I would say to not worry if you don't know much about the products BAE Systems make, as long as you are able to demonstrate that you have common sense and are able to think logically about how they would work then you can learn the details during the apprenticeship.