Degree Apprentice Review

Day-to-day I work as a CAD design engineer, working to support program engineers as well as Building AVA (automated vehicle architecture) tools that embed engineers knowledge in to CAD models . I have responsibilities along side with mentoring fellow apprentices. I interact with other more experienced engineers on a regular to help with my work.

The most obvious skill have have developed is CAD drawing skills, learning how to robustly build models with in CATIA. I have developed good communications skills by communicating with colleagues and I have presented to my whole departments with helped with confidence and presentation skills. My engineering knowledge has developed after experience working on projects.

The company treat us like normal employees, and we all have worth while, value add projects that tie in with actually business needs. The amount of apprentices is great as well, as we are like a large family and always know someone who could help you. The work is also very involving and challenging, therefore job satisfaction is high.

There are many process in place to help us along the apprenticeship, We have multiple managers ensuring that our apprenticeship is a structure and organised experience. These include helping us with ares of engineering we should be things about such as designing with manufacturing in mind and project risk assessing. These aim to help us become world class engineers.

The support from the employer is great, I have very frequent interactions with management and they are do there best for us. We have as much contact with work based learning managers as we want as they have desks in the same part of the office as us. Also as previously mentioned, we are treated by everyone in the business as equals to graduate engineers, things makes you feel valued and

We have our internal training website called success factors, where we have both compulsory and optional training programs available in pretty much anything you could want. This was also how the CAD training we completed was tracked. This was a combination of online tutorials and exercises, and classroom based sessions.

The training provided is very integrated with my job role and in the majority focuses on it. But there is also part where they will focus on more general engineering knowledge to help us with our personal engineering development. We help track these development with bi-weekly meeting with a technical specialist.

There a few extra curricular, activity such as the Jaguar Land Rover sailing club. There is also a Jaguar Land Rover Challenge which is a Duke of Edinburgh Type expedition that happen once a year in September time. It aims to improve teamwork and communication skills, as well as being a social experience.

Yes

Great place to work. Apprenticeship is far superior to anything out there that I found when researching. The age of the apprenticeship mean it is very well integrated into the business practices now that there isn't any stigma against us. There is a wide opportunities to work anywhere in the business during the apprenticeship, so you can tailor your experience as much as you want. This is the benefit of being in a large company.

Prepare well, have plenty of examples where you were keen to learn. This is more important sometimes than what you've actually done, especially if applying for an apprenticeship, you may not have so much experience. There also mechanical reasoning test in the interview so look up example like levels and gears. There are many useful websites online.