Apprentice Review

My responsibilities include carrying out testing for maintenance releases with external vendor. Working on dev tasks in my projects. Communicating and collaborating with team members to resolve issues. Creating test documents for audit purposes.

Time management skills have improved where I break down my tasks and goals into three categories to complete them. I've developed Problem solving skills when doing UAT testing and using those results to investigate the code problems.

I enjoyed my experience a lot, it was something new to me and I have been able to develop a good understanding on development but also real world problems in investment banking. I enjoyed problem solving and providing valuable input to team.

Balancing the workplace tasks and apprenticeship tasks was difficult in the beginning, one of the reasons was the apprenticeship tasks weren't spaced out well. Meaning you have the training, you do the training tasks and then you get 2 to 3 weeks to complete a report about that training with work from the workplace. Which is not enough time and you have to think about what the right work for that report would be. So the report aspect is quite rushed and the deadlines are not good.

Support from my employer was great. I have catch ups with my Line manager every week to discuss what I've done during the week and here I can discuss any challenges I'm facing. My manager provides me support where I need it and have given me opportunities to exercise some skills such as presenting skills. I presented in front of the management team to become better at presenting. Moreover, my team members are also really supportive in my learning. If there's anything I didn't understand, we would have knowledge transfers.

My Coach was supportive and whenever I needed support, I was able to organise a call with him to resolve the issue or get better understanding for something I didn't understand.

One thing I found really useful from my training was use of version control which is heavily integrated in the workplace.

I volunteered to be an apprentice ambassador to help the upcoming apprentices. Moreover, I've also volunteered to present and share my experiences in front of young people at a NatWest event.

Yes

From my experience, it allowed me to learn about an industry that I didn't know much about when I first started my job. I was able to learn transferrable skills that I can use in other roles and learn to be proactive.

Don't be afraid to fail, because you are going to fail. Rather than focusing on the failure, focus on how I can improve and learn to become better at the task. Have recurring zoom calls with team members to understand things you don't understand and ask to perform those tasks yourself to apply what you've learned.