Maintenance Apprentice Review

Now that I am based at the EMC factory full time my day consists of shadowing qualified IMT's doing there daily jobs to learn the ropes from them. On occasions I will also be given projects to work on which could be various things to Kaizen ideas or other team requirements.

I have learned to develop my problem solving skills working on lots of new machinery and equipment to help my colleagues fixing issues. I have also developed my social skills as I have been required to integrate my self into many different teams as I rotate around the factory. I have learnt the purpose of many different tools and how to use them.

Now that I am based fully on site working with trained IMTs and learning new skills I enjoy my job and I enjoy coming to work for both the educational and the social aspects. However, the college aspect of the course was not enjoyable. There was social rift in the group that was never properly rectified by EEF. Some of the training was quite lacklustre as we would often be left without any tutors or would have entire weeks with no scheduled work or stretch tasks. The college was also a significant drive from my home and my workplace making it very costly for me to drive their daily.

The structure of the programme is quite lacking. Whilst at college (EEF) there would often be times that we did not have a tutor or the tutor had not prepared any work for us to do and we would be often left to sit around waiting whilst being told to carry on with work for other sections. If all of our work was up to date we would be left with nothing to do forcing me to deliberate pace out my work to reduce the amount of time I would spend bored. The structure on site feels better as you shadow people. This can be great as some people are very friendly and really want to help you learn and show you a lot and are very helpful.

JLR have been quite proactive in dealing with issues with regular visits from the apprentice managers and our on site apprentice champion who is an easy port of call for any issues we have and has on occasion gone out of his way to find education tasks for us during quiet periods.

I do not feel very supported by the training provider as we are never really given any clear information regarding our qualification as we are due to hand it in. The integrated training manager assigned by the college is quite helpful but I feel that he also doesn't get enough support from the college to facilitate us and is often chasing the college in regards to marking etc.

Some of the training provided has helped in my job role such as hand fitting, PLC training and electrical wiring have helped me with learning tools and techniques to assist in my role. Other courses however such as milling and turning have no real relevance to me as I do not work in the tool room as a tool maker and will rarely if ever have to do any milling in my role.

Different shifts will often have sports teams that will play various sports such as football. There is often a strong social side to the shifts that you are working on which helped me to integrate myself within the teams whenever I moved to a new section during my plant rotations.

Yes

Whilst I do believe that there has been some issues with my apprenticeship and some things could have been handled better overall I am very happy with my apprenticeship and I am proud of the company I work for and I am very excited for my future career within Jaguar Land Rover.

Have patience during the application process as it can be lengthy. Your knowledge going into the interview isn't as essential as having the correct behaviours and attitude and this is true for the apprenticeship as a whole. You will perform much better and be much more respected in the work place with the right attitude.