Finance Apprentice Review

As a finance apprentice for Unilever Food Solutions, I am required to control Brand Marketing Investment and Overhead spending with the use of multiple internal and external systems and data pulls, run a monthly rebate review process (essentially reviewing discounts offered to customers) and produce various reports to help the customer development, marketing and leadership teams make general decisions with regards to budgets, promotions and price increases.

This is my first major job role so I have learnt many new skills such as communicating regularly through teams and emails to singular people and groups (to general colleagues and members of the leadership team). I have learnt how to make my presentations concise and and clear, adding as much value as possible to whoever is listening. I have also developed my problem solving and resiliency when constantly overcoming day-to-day issues with regards to data pulls, tables and general queries/problems from my colleagues. I have also massively improved my excel skills through the use of pivot tables, formulae and conditional formatting etc.

I enjoy it very much, I love the variety of assignments that I have to take on each day/month and that I am not stuck doing repetitive jobs. Although my job is centralised on particular tasks to do at specific times of the month, these tasks always bring about new challenges and give me the freedom to expand my knowledge on certain business issues.

I believe that the work side of the programme was very well organised since I was given many handovers at the beginning of my apprenticeship to ensure I knew how everything worked and many calls/meetings with senior colleagues were organised so that I had a general understanding of who everyone was and who I had to contact should I have any problems. My line manager was also very helpful throughout the process. However one issue I had was with the study provider who arranged many meetings and sent over a lot of information but wasn't clear regarding the process of the apprenticeship so was surprised with the amount of work I had to get completed outside of job hours in order to get everything completed.

My line manager gave me much-needed aid and support throughout the apprenticeship - especially for the first year, it took me a while to get to grips with the general business processes and acronyms but she was always ready to arrange calls and meetings to make sure I fully understood everything so I could eventually manage my tasks independently

Kaplan would arrange a catch-up every 6 weeks to see how I was getting on and what I was learning and always provided me with the needed textbooks and online study aids in order to complete the qualifications. However, throughout this process, I thought that these regular calls were unneeded and only resulted in extra work to tick a few boxes but weren't actually beneficial for working towards my qualification

Since my job role is mainly related to management accounting, the BA2 curriculum has mainly allowed me to have a better understanding of budgeting, controls and decision-making within my finance team. However, the other exams have also enabled me to get a better understanding of how businesses work, and what their overall objectives are which helps me to add more value.

There's many extra-curricular activities - weekly netball at the office, occasional charity football matches to take part in, walking marathons, the Leatherhead office has a gym, table tennis table and foosball table. Unilever also arranges regular professional networking events and conferences where people can also get additional training and information from other business functions but also allows people to get to know each other and branch out.

Yes

It is a very inclusive workplace - there are many opportunities to get to know everyone and this friendly environment produces a functional atmosphere where you're able to get on with your job but also able to receive support from whoever is able to provide it whenever you are stuck on a particular task.

Make sure you sell yourself, demonstrate that you have malleable qualities and skills that will allow you to get on with your future colleagues and that you are able to show independence and team work in a variety of situations. Throughout the application process, demonstrate how you will add value to the specific function you're applying to e.g. for marketing demonstrate what ideas you could bring to the business in order to promote our brands, for finance demonstrate how you have an analytical mind and bring ideas to how you could improve business processes