Network Engineer Degree Apprentice Review

I rotate through different teams and departments after every 3 months. Right now I am working with the Cards Testing Team and we are at the end of the product/process cycle and what we do is we run automated or manual tests on the processes that have just been developed. For new processes, we run manual regression tests to ensure that they do not affect the rest of the system/platform and if we do find any errors or regression tests that are failed, these are then given to the Business Analyst who then puts in a request for the process to be revoked until all errors are fixed and then the testing process restarts until all regression tests pass in which the new process is taken into production.

Yes I have learnt a whole variety of new skills and have developed my existing soft skills exponentially. As of now it has been about 16 months since I started my apprenticeship and throughout my rotations through different teams I have constantly built up my team-working skills and communication skills. The importance of these skills wasn't highlighted much to me before the apprenticeship but now I have the understanding of how important soft skills really are and the role they play in the execution of a project and especially the implementation of a new process. Also during one of the teams I was working in, I had the role of a Business Analyst, and my job was to create and delegate requirements to the developers and testers for a new process and this role helped me to strongly develop my analytical skills as I had to ensure the entire requirement was critiqued so I knew exactly what the business wanted to implement and also so the developers and testers knew exactly what they had to do for the requirement to execute it successfully and efficiently.

I have really enjoyed my program so far and it has been a positive experience throughout. I have been apart of multiple great teams with people whom are extremely kind and not hesitant at all to help me whenever I get stuck. I have been doing well in my assignments and feel that the knowledge that I am learning is extremely useful and I can use it in an actual professional environment to benefit myself and the business. I do not have much to complain about and have had such a great introduction to the corporate world. I was reading online before I started the apprenticeship that the corporate environment is extremely toxic and stressful which put doubts into my mind about taking the apprenticeship, however, the experience that I have had so far has been the polar opposite and I can't think of any other ways in which it could have been better!

My program is very well organised. My week is structured so that I take the minimum of 20% of the week doing off-the-job training for my apprenticeship work which is contributing towards my degree at the University of Roehampton. How it is exactly structured is that I work with a separate team on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday (right now that team is the Cards Testing team), and then I have my apprenticeship day on Wednesday which is a day dedicated solely to my apprenticeship work, and then I have a day working with my main team (the Main Cards team) on Friday. This is how its been for my entire time with the company and its a great structure which has been very beneficial to my professional development.

I receive an enormous amount of support from my employer. As mentioned above, I have a specific structure put in place to allow me to perform well both academically and in the professional environment. An example of the support I receive is: whenever I have a deadline coming up for one of my assignments and I don't think I am going to complete the submission in time, my manager allows me to take more time off of work which is usually on a Friday when I am working with the main team, to work on my assignments and ensure that I have a good balance across the last couple of weeks of term to get my assignments in and still get my tasks done at work.

I receive a little bit of support from my training provider which is good enough. During the term we usually have a 3 hour workshop on the module and then I have lunch and then about 4 hours to go over my notes, go through the chapters in the textbook and work on my assignment. To be frank, the training provider to host workshops throughout the week but usually during the time that I am working so I cannot attend those. As for my modules and assignment submissions, I do believe that the support we receive is below par. For example, the assignment briefs and marking rubric are quite vague and do not contain enough detail for me to hit the higher bands and get higher marks. In some cases I have followed exactly what the higher bands of the marking rubric has said and have only managed to get about half of the marks which is extremely frustrating. We also get a draft submission before our final submission which is only for a single task in the entire assignment which is usually four tasks which to be honest is completely pointless. I have asked some of my lecturers if it is okay for me to send a draft submission for them to go through in their email and only 1 lecturer actually skimmed through my entire draft and gave me great feedback and thats the only assignment that I managed to score an A on. I don't think its the lecturers' fault as they all are really busy but I just feel as if more time needs to be put into helping improve the draft assignment submissions instead of just learning the content as the assignment submission help us to absorb the knowledge we have just learnt and actually display it and get feedback on if we have actually got the right understanding of the module.

I feel as if my qualification helps me to perform a lot better in my role. For example, I was working on the Software module whilst simultaneously working with the Robotic Process Automation team as a developer and the Software module significantly improved my problem solving skills which transferred straight over to my role in the bank and allowed me to debug the solutions I created a lot quicker and become a more efficient worker.

There are some social activities after work on days when we have big team meetings but to be honest I don't really go to those as there is alcohol involved and I am Muslim so I cannot be in that environment. There are some activities within the office to get involved in such as wine and cheese tasting events and quizzes but those also have some alcohol involved so I don't get involved with those. Other than that there aren't any other events and not much networking events apart from the town halls in London but I think those are for senior members only.

Yes

It is a great company with a good culture and environment. The people there are extremely friendly and are always happy to help. There are also no such things as 'dumb questions' as there are lots of acronyms and things specific to the bank to learn which can take a long time to get the grasp of but as long as they are curious and patient, they can understand all of the specific things/systems within the bank and how they work.

Tips I would give is to learn how to type fast and start taking notes using digital software such as Notepad. During my first couple of months I would sit in on meetings with a variety of people throwing around professional jargon and it is so much stuff to try and write down you wouldn't be quick enough using a pen and paper and I would get so confused only a quarter way through the meeting. Also make sure you have some confidence and are an outgoing person as there are lots of times in which you have to leave your comfort zone such as having to schedule meetings with strangers from other organisations to get more information on how our products are managed on their systems. Last tip would be just to be very curious and never stop trying to get your head around something. There have been some systems in the bank which I could not understand at all when first introduced and have taken me multiple months to get the hang of and actually use.