Human Resources Review

- Taking extensive notes of long meetings, editing notes to send back for reviewal, and making any amendments requested to notes - Arrange and attend calls in a timely manner - Take on ad hoc project work to suit HR's capacity - Take on any time consuming/ manual administrative tasks to bolster team capacity and adjust to any tasks that any others assign to you, under management approval - Take on placement roles where there is a vital recruitment gap to fill in under-resourced teams

Was only ever provided with dates last minute when new placements finally sourced. It took 9 months to find a final placement, with several fall throughs. My prior placement had no career opportunities and I was forced into it. Early careers almost completely ignore the existence of HR apprentices, and there obviously isn't support for HR like there is with larger publicity cohorts like engineering apprentices.

It depends on the line manager, who is left to sort most things out. I have had some great line managers, and some of a clashing style and they were off for weeks with stress.

My current manager is great, however previous managers have denied me any working time towards qualifications, even when I showed them that I was entitled to up to 20% time a week, and I was prompted to explain a very personal home situation to no avail and a serious decline in my grades and mental health, from a student who has previously achieved top grades in A Levels and a previous BA Hons degree before my job at BAE Systems.

I think my training provider has turned out to be pretty great, and although at first I was surprised that there was no push to achieve the highest scores, this ended up suiting my needs and supported me in difficult situations with my employer.

No, there aren't many options that apply to a HR apprentice, however I did try. They were extremely disorganised and put me in some situations where it interrupted my main role. The ideas they had were nice though.

Yes

It depends on the character. If it is an individual looking for a long-term corporate role in engineering, they pay well and they could keep their job for years; or climb to a competitive salary if they are currently low grade. However, I wouldn't recommend my apprenticeship in HR, I think there's a lot of work needed on it, with it being such a small cohort (1 HR apprentice per year at time of writing) who don't receive much direction, support or general serious attitude towards their role structure, or variety needed for them to have effective learning applicable outside of BAE.

Make sure you research the role and the company and ask lots of questions about your daily tasks in roles/expectations of what skills you will acquire.