EO Review

I'm an exceutive officer at the home office. My day-to-day job incurs monioting the team mailbox, ensuring accounts are reconciled and balanced within deadlines, attending weekly finance meetings and monitoring/updating the daily cashbook.

I learnt new elements of the finance department as I came in with no experience and within a month learnt the cashbook, mailbox, balance sheet monitor and was starting to get the jist of things. Time management is crucial to develop here as you have strict deadlines to meet.

I certainly enjoy the apprenticeship as I get the best of both worlds of a full-time job and studying behind me to gain qualifications. They offer great networks, whether it be with other apprentices, sponsers or potentially career boosters!

The civil service as a whole are are good company to work for from what I've established. They need to be more up to date on their technology but they're working on that at the moment with their new 'smarter working' element. The only thing I'd suggest is more management support and training on the job i.e. sitting down and having 1-1's or organising small hour sessions for teaching new skills such as excel, adelphi and the ins and outs of the job. More of those would be a lot more useful!!

It seems fairly well structured from what I've experienced so far. Maybe more notifications of the courses you get sent on and how to book travel, accomadation etc so that isn't left til last minute. The online resources could do with being updated more frequently and more meet ups with your talent couch. On the whole the programme has a lot to offer and has great extra-cirriculum events you can attend which is always good to see in my inbox!

They offer many events to attend if you wished whether they're free or paid for ones which are always good to boost your cv! Hearing more from them with coaching and assessing your development would be useful and greater online resources would be better.

Line-managers or those with responsibility of you need to take a more supported teaching role and be patient with the long list of questions that may follow as being the newbie or with less experience with them they're going to want to know a lot to ensure they've got clarification of what they're doing before they do it. Some work needed to impove employer support..

The starting salary seems reasonable. The travel costs incurred can be high if travelling between offices but that is to be expected of the role. Only reccomendation would be to find an apprenticeship travelcard that works outside of london. The only one I 've found qualifies you if you work in london and LIVE in london. A card for those who live outside of london would be useful.

Yes. There's plenty of events or conferences you can attend if you so wanted. Some are fairly expensive so may not be an option for some but there's also plenty of free or lower costing ones available too!

Yes

Good company to start a career with. Allows room for progression and training alongside of your career. Suitable for any age from 16 onwards with different ranks, job roles and schemes you can apply to.

Check the website!! There's plenty of information of the different types of schemes available including information of length of training, salary, job rank and description. If you do some of your own research too to look for reviews from civil servants who've done or are on the schemes like myself to see if it's something you'd be suited to.