Rating

9/10
  • 1. Please give an overview of your role and what this involves on a day-to-day basis:
  • My personal role within the bank is working in the Storage Services team as a Storage Analyst. I typically work on zoning and provisioning tasks, work with storage arrays from Dell EMC and HP 3PAR. Any task that creates change needs to be recorded on Service Now and requires authorization before the task can be completed. Daily I perform health checks on the arrays and react accordingly to anything that stands out, such as disk failures or other hardware issues.

    8/10

  • 2. Have you learnt any new skills or developed existing skills?
  • I have been given the opportunity to learn a lot of new skills both within my role in Storage Services and in the apprenticeship programme itself. I have attended several Storage related courses supplied by Dell EMC and HP. On top of this I have learned general IT skills from the apprenticeship programme with QA such as better Windows knowledge, networking skills in a Cisco course and knowledge in Security.

    9/10

  • 3. To what extent do you enjoy your programme?
  • The programme has been good so far, I joined a good team to work with and met a lot of great people including plenty of other apprentices. The company is great to work for, flexible working is excellent having the facility to work from home when required. The culture is great, there is always new things happening and even though the company is massive they do a great job of making you feel involved with daily/weekly emails including opportunities to join events.

    9/10

  • 4. How valued do you feel by NatWest?
  • As mentioned in my answer to question 3, it's great to feel involved via invites to many different events within RBS. On a regular basis getting appreciation from my manager whether in a 1to1 or on the daily/weekly conference call for completing certain tasks etc. Within the apprenticeship programme we had to complete "Challenge 2017" which was about team work and creating an innovative idea and then presenting it to a board of directors/managers, this was a great experience and certainly felt valued throughout the process.

    9/10

  • 5. How well organised/structured is your programme?
  • The programme has been well organised from the induction all the way through to the completion of the first year of the apprenticeship. The induction was formatted well, with different speakers and having interesting tasks etc. The support from my assessor at QA was excellent, kept in touch through phone/email and seen him in person regularly to discuss and sign off modules for completion.

    9/10

  • 6a. How much support do you receive from your training provider?
  • The support from my assessor at QA was excellent, kept in touch through phone/email and seen him in person regularly to discuss and sign off modules for completion. He told me whenever I had questions about anything I could just email or phone him and he'd do his best to get back to me with an answer, and he did. Always replied in a timely manner and helped me every time I needed it.

    10/10

  • 6b. How much support do you receive from your employer?
  • I get all the support I need from my Manager with both my apprenticeship and my job role. He understood from the start that I would need time to do my apprenticeship work as well as the job, I just had to ask for the time as and when. My mentor has been a great help throughout the process of learning the job role, teaching me various things and allocating well suited tasks for me.

    9/10

  • 7. How well does your salary/package meet your costs?
  • The salary definitely meets my costs, it is certainly a very well paid apprenticeship compared to the usual apprenticeship schemes around. My living costs are covered easily, travel costs are okay too even with a bit of a commute (again, flexible working can help too with working from home on the odd occasion), daily costs and social costs.

    9/10

  • 8. Are there many opportunities outside of work?
  • There is always new things happening and even though the company is massive they do a great job of making you feel involved with regular activities and events outside of the usual "work activities" even simply having a football match every Friday is a great thing to look forward to, also having a gym on campus is a good benefit to get a quick workout in at lunch or just before/after work.

    9/10

  • 9. Would you recommend NatWest to a friend?
  • Yes


  • 9b. Why?
  • I would recommend RBS to a friend simply because I think anyone could work here, the opportunities seem endless here.


  • 10. What tips or advice would you give to others applying to NatWest?
  • Take your time with the application process, think carefully about your answers. Be prepared for the phone interview - may contain a maths question!! And for the end interview, be well spoken - don't be shy and be prepared for a role play/memory exercise.


Details

Level 3 Apprenticeship

Finance, Business Operations, Information Technology

Scotland

April 2018


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