Production Apprentice Review

On a day to day basis you fit into the business and take on a job within a team. The idea being that the team will provide you with training so that you have hands on experience of the job and are then in a good position to apply for jobs within the media industry.

Definitely. I have previous experience of organisational / time-management skills but after taking on different roles in the BBC I have further developed these skills and learnt how they operate within the context of the media industry. I have also had the opportunity to learn entirely new skills that are specific to the industry. For example basic editing skills and ingest/transfer skills.

I thoroughly enjoy the programme. It's great to get hands on experience in the industry and to be given the opportunity to learn new skills and be given responsibility in your role. It's also really great to be able to try out a variety of job roles and move around departments.

I think the programme is organised as best it can be but to an extent it really relies on the goodwill of people within the departments you work in. For example, if you're in a department that is really busy or short staffed for whatever reason you might not get that much chance to learn because no one has the time to teach you but if you're in a department that someone takes it upon themselves to show you the ropes you can have a really full experience and learn a lot.

There is plenty support available if you need it. Easy to speak to your manager / colleagues if you need support and they listen to your requests. Also in general it's a very relaxed working environment meaning that if you are particularly stressed / need a break for whatever reason it's easy to just take a 5 min break, get a cup of tea and take a moment to calm down.

We get a good amount of support from our training provider. Our college tutor meets with us fortnightly at our work to talk us through our coursework which is really really useful. Our days at the college are useful to an extent as they give us an opportunity to focus on with college work but a lot of the time I don't feel we are being taught anything which makes the days feel slightly wasted.

I don't think it helps much in all honesty. It will be great to have the qualification and be able to put that on our CV but a lot of the qualification feels like tick-box exercises that don't actually help us in our roles much. I think the one useful thing about it is that it ensures we get a range of experiences as we have to meet certain criteria. For example we have to record and edit audiovisual content; we have to do research, we have to do office pre-production.

There are lots of things to get involved in at work. There's is fairly good email communication about them if you want to get involved but word of mouth seems to be the best way to hear about things. In terms of networking events there are regular emails about events like that should you wish to attend.

Yes

It's a really great company to work for and in general it's a very good working environment. Conditions are very good and there's lots of support if you need it. Also lots of extras that are great such as 'Perks at Work' which give you discounts on things.

My advise would be to get experience and just keep applying for jobs. If you make a good impression and you're name keeps popping up they might take you in on a short term contract and from then once you've got a foot in the door it gets easier.