Customer Service Engineer Review

For the 4 days per week I am not at college, I will be spending time on site with an engineer. For me, this involves checking what jobs are taking place the night before and arranging to meet with the engineer the next day. I will then spend the day shadowing/working with the engineer to complete the job that has been assigned. This could be fault finding and rectifying an issue, performing maintenance or performing updates among many other things.

I have definitely developed new skills and knowledge while at work, all of the engineers I work with are very skilled and intelligent and more than happy to answer any questions I have. I feel like my skills as an engineer especially fault finding and diagnostic skills have improved as well as my knowledge of general engineering subjects.

For me, the program and structure of the apprenticeship works very well. I am currently working in a rotation plan where I focus on each of the different areas of the business (X-ray, CT, MR etc) for a set amount of time which I feel works well for me as I can get stuck in with lots of different kit and systems. For me this is very enjoyable as I like being hands on, I would definitely say that you get out what you put in and if you're keen to learn then the opportunities are there for you.

I find that my apprenticeship is well structured, with me following a rotation in different areas of the business I know what I should be working on and what I will be working on in future. The progression through the apprenticeship has been clearly laid out for me, I just have to follow the steps to get there.

In my experience the help and support has been great, our apprentice manager is very helpful and any issues can be raised with her and will be properly dealt with. The support from Engineers and Service Managers has also been great, Engineers are always happy to help with any issues or anything you don't understand as well as the managers.

In the past there have been consistent meetings with our training provider in order to discuss our progress and any help needed going forward, recently however there has been less of that due to Stegta's training officer leaving. Although we haven't had consistent meetings recently, we did have other ways to get support and now a new training officer has been appointed we have been told that the meetings will be starting back up again shortly.

The BTEC qualification that I am currently doing is a general engineering qualification which covers many different engineering subjects such as maths, mechanical principles, electronic devices, PLC's etc. I've found that I've used bits from each of these subjects when working, some more than others but just having a knowledge of general engineering can't be a bad thing.

Twice a year the company holds an apprentice forum, this is where all of the apprentices come together either for the graduation of year 4 apprentices or for an educational forum where we go to a site such as one of our factories or a research site. As well as being educational these are also good for socializing with the other apprentices as we go out for meals which are paid for by the company and have a laugh. There are also some meetups with the engineers such as Christmas Parties but that varies depending on where you are.

Yes

For me my apprenticeship has been great so far and i've had lots of different opportunities and support throughout. Everyone who i've worked with has been great and I feel like I am trusted and able to make my own decisions and progress at a good rate. I would say that there are a lot of opportunities available going forwards and If you work hard you are definitely rewarded for it.

I would say during the interview process just be yourself, you should be professional and mature about things but it's important that you can relax and have a laugh with everyone as you'll be working with them for at least the next 4 years if you're successful. Be prepared to work hard during the apprenticeship as you definitely get out what you put in, but the more effort you put in the more opportunities there are and you will be rewarded for your hard work.