Engineering Technician Apprentice Review

As an apprentice, we rotate around the company, doing a different placement every four months. This allows us to experience different areas of the company and engineering. As such, my role and day to day activities change. However, in my current placement, I am mostly office based, using some software for electrical modelling and creating spreadsheets.

In my time on the apprenticeship I have learnt how to do metal work on a lathe, how to write a company report and how to produce designs and technical reports

I enjoy the programme because there is a wide range of placements available to us in a wide range of engineering areas. I also enjoy that we work with a range of different people, who can share their experiences and knowledge.

The company needs younger employees, graduates and apprentices in order to ensure there is still a strong engineering work force for the future.

The organisation could use some improvement but we can feed back to our line manager who can make changes according to our experiences, and improve the organisation for the following years.

The lecturers have been good in supporting us for their assignments and during their lessons. I'm sure that if any extra help was needed they would try to assist as much as possible. IT support isn't quite as good as sometimes IT access can be hard to get which can stop us from being able to do assignments.

My employer provides a good amount of support. We have a contact (our line manager) who has a meeting slot free every week if we need to talk to her, and who we can contact at any time if we have any problems or questions etc..

I think that we are quite well paid on our apprenticeship, and personally it covers my costs quite well. The increase in our salary each year is usually quite generous.

There are lots of opportunities outside of work such as volunteering at STEM activities which can be in schools and at events around the local communitity. BAE also takes part in field gun and other competitions and activities which employees can partake in.

Yes

Because it's a large company with lots of opportunities to learn and see a lot from knowledgeable people. It provides a good alternative to going to university,pays well and provides a lot of opportunities.

Do your research into BAE as a company and what happens at the site you are applying to, but come in with an open mind and learn as much as you can, taking every opportunity.