APEP PDD Degree Apprentice Review

Daily tasks include joining a variety of meetings, often a lot of data analysis as I am in a testing environment, submitting job cards and requests for tests along with liaising with the relevant people. Often days can be slow so it can be a lot of asking people if there's any work to get involved.

Definitely its building the engineering mindset, the more analysis I've done the more I see myself picking up on things that I hadn't picked up on previously. I have colleagues that push me to always present the work I've completed so definitely developing on communication and public speaking skills

When I have work to do, which I often struggle to have enough to keep me occupied, I do really enjoy the work side of the course. University is ok but definitely not something me or my peers look forward to, often a sense of disorganisation.

Overall managers often take on apprentices without a clear plan of what they are going to do for them leaving little structure although open communication about what you as an apprentice need with your manager is often received well. Sometimes seems like quite a gap in communication between employer and university which again detracts from the structure.

Support from employer is pretty good, all colleagues extremely willing to help and answer questions and there is help available to access for mental health etc within the company

There are resources available to access, I personally have not needed to reach out to the training provider for support at this stage

There is some benefit to the university work but nothing so far has had any sort of direct impact for my job role, perhaps developing my academic thinking but nothing directly applied to my role. Most of the value added learning comes from actually just doing the job and learning from those around you

There are a variety of things to get involved in with the early careers network running numerous events throughout the year. There's various sports run; football. badminton, netball, karting. Also a range of networks within the company open for anyone to get involved in.

Yes

It's a great opportunity. The amount you learn on the job really reassures me that it was the right decision over uni especially when my job role is largely the same as graduates in my department. When you also look at being paid to get a degree over paying thousands for one it seems like a no brainer.

Research the company so you have some background to talk about, make sure you know why the JLR scheme in particular appeals to you over over apprenticeships.