Business Support Capital Markets Apprentice (Inside Sales Executive) Review

Overview of my role: My role involves being an inside sales executive. This means being a sales support member on a range of accounts. I work under the Capital Market sector which means financial businesses such as investment banks, retail banks, asset managers, insurance brokers & traders. Day-to-day this involves responding to customers requirments such as creating and providing quotes, creating order forms, raising modifications etc.

I believe i have learnt new skills and developed existing skills. I have learnt a lot in regards to IT. My role involves developing my existing skills on IT systems such as excel for example. My role also involves using job specific IT systems which before joining i had no clue exised. Therefore i have developed those. Also i believe i have developed existing communciation skills. This is due to interacting with new people, and also general communication to clients whether this is via email or face to face.

I am enjoying the programme. I see it as a very good oppotunity for me to understand what i really want to do, where i want to end up and gives me key experience for future. I believe it is a very good place for me to start my career.

My programme internally is organised/structured well - We was provided with with a lot of introduction & training sessions within the first couple of months. However, the external company who is running our apprenticeship (BPP University) lacks organisation/structure. I believe there is a lot of room for improvment. Recently, we did have a face to face with a represeantive to voice our concerns which i think was useful. However, it will only be useful if what we mentioned is actioned asap.

I recieve a lot of support from my employer/manager. My role involes quite a lot of responsilibity and i deal with the most demanding and formal customers. Therefore the standard of work i have to consistently produce is very high. As i am new the role, it involves a lot of learning but where needed support. If i am stuck i will always ask those around me for assistance and i believe i get all the support needed.

We are provided with quite a lot of support from our training providers. We are given webinars to dial into to help on our assigments. We are also offered face to face sessions which cover webinar content but in a classroom enviroment. We also have 'coaches' which we have regualr calls with to either discuss the asssignment or our progress. The part that lacks from our provider is the organisation and lack of clear structure.

To a large extent, i believe some aspects of my qualification will help me perform better in my role due to the qualification helping me develop key skills such as communication, IT or personal skills. However, apart from the above, i don't really think the qulaification will help me perform much better in my role as it is very generic and not job specific.

There is many oppotunites to get involved in a number of events at my workplace. This can be simple social activies or doing large sport events such as a annual charity bike ride. In terms of networking events, there is loads of these which are held on almost a weekly basis.

Yes

I would recommend Colt to a friend. This is because the balance of work life and normal life is very reasonable. The people who work here are friendly and supportive. There is a formal enviroment but nothing too overwheling to be negative. I have been given a lot of responsilbity quite quickly so feel important to the team.

Tips/advice i would give to others applying to Colt would be to understand Colt as well as you can before hand, try and understand what we do and how we do it. Prepare any questions you may have if you are unsure of anything. Be yourself at the interviews.