Apprentice CAD Engineer Review

I am a mentor to 3 lower year apprentices. So day to day I work on supporting them with their jobs and tasks should they need it. I am a CAD engineer, so I will be working on my current project, while discussing with programme leads, technical specialists and subject matter experts in order to produce something that can be manufactured and used on our vehicles.

Yes, before starting JLR I had a basic understanding of how CAD worked. But now i know much more about its capabilities and what can be achieved by using 'primitive shapes'. Im also much faster with my CAD skills and can produce a part more quickly and efficiently. I have also improved upon my communication and presentation skills, from constant networking and concept/idea presentations.

Im quite lucky to be in a department that has multiple young engineers doing the same apprenticeship. This way we all teach eachother new things that we have picked up along the way, and happily share out useful information to make everyones lives easier. With this its great for making/having friends, which are around you/near by.

My current programme year is quite well organised. University is laid out for block release, where we have one week at uni and five or six weeks at work. And while at work we have leads and line managers who control our workload/projects. However, the first year and second year let the apprenticeship down. The college that the company chose to educate us was not of a good enough quality. The idea of college was to lay the correct foundations for us to all pass into the second year of our intended university course, however, none of the modules were aligned or challenging enough. So not enough was taught to us, or the correct subjects were taught to us to enable us to pass into the second year of uni. We are all having to sit the first year.

My employer is paying for my degree which im very grateful for. I have been able to make use of the on site occupational health team too on more than one occasion. Im currently going through physio on my wrist, and a phased return which my department and manager are really supportive of. There are internal courses that are available to each employer should they need it to help with skills needed with the business, which i have made use of to.

We are allowed to use our friday afternoons to complete any college work or uni work that we have due or to revise on. This is the only time we are allowed to complete our study work, however i would personally like more time than this as i feel that 3 hours once a week is not enough due to our jobs relying so heavily on our degree. Plus the skills/knowledge that we are learning through uni all apply in the workplace anyway. I am grateful for the 3 hours on a friday afternoon that we get to work on our uni qualification studies, however i would like longer to work on these, perhaps an entire day. As it is quite disruptive when working on CAD or what not, and then stopping your work to get on with uni work. Often people, including myself just work through the entire of the friday or just before the end of the day and dont get to do any uni work. But are penalized if we are found doing it at any other time of day.

Materials and mechanics come into play quite often, along with applied engineering design. It makes you think about surface finish, draft angles and tooling direction. I think a lot of what has been CAD'ed in the past is often not thought about in the future weather it is manufacturerable or not, or what process would be used to produce the part. So with uni and college having taught us about casting, vac moulding etc. It all comes into play for my role.

Not that im aware of, JLR sponsor places, but i dont think the employees are affiliated with them. There is an employee learning scheme where each employee has a budget of £200 to put towards learning a new skill from a set list of courses which is helpful. I used mine to complete my CBT.

Yes

Its a six year long apprenticeship with an almost guaranteed job at the end. In the fourth year you can go on placements within the company to try and find your calling if you havent already found it. The ELS is really good, not something you get at every company. And every year our department do a CSR event over a day or two where we give back to the community. I think that if you can find the right department to work in with the right people then JLR is a great place to work

Stand out from the crowd. Team players are great, but the company are after individuals who dont follow the herd. You need to show initiative and when to take the lead. Another tip i would give it so practice the initial testing that they give you before you are offered an interview, this is where most individuals are weeded out for not being accurate enough. There are lots of different websites with free questions on to practice and prepare with