Marketing Apprentice Review

I work in the marketing team which involves multiple different channels such as PPC, Social Media and Email. This was a great team to start in as I was able to rotate around the teams to get an understanding of how all the teams work, this allowed me to look at what I liked and dislikes whilst also helping me for my future development as I have a wide understanding of the marketing team as a whole.

The main skills which I have learnt over my apprenticeship so far are technical skills such as using Ad Words, Business Manager ect. I have also developed my presenting skills as we presented in front of the Founder and CEO about our DofE experience, this was a great opportunity to boost our profile in the business

In the first 12 months I really enjoyed my apprenticeship, it was great going on residential and learning about the business and really getting stuck in to your day to day job. In my team, I was never seen as or treated as the apprentice which meant I was given lots of responsibility from day 1. The down side however has come from the changes to our courses and confusion about the time period of the apprenticeship which has caused a lot of stress. Our initial training provider wasn’t great which meant our level 3 didn’t run as smoothly as it could. Plus we have a long wait when we finished our level 3 before going on to a level 4. The course we are on now with a new provider keeps changing which makes the experience not enjoyable as there is a lot of uncertainty

There has been lots of change on the course which shows the course could have been organised a lot better. The length of the apprenticeship is the main problem as it has gone from a 2 year course to a 3 year course. We were one of the first waves to go through our level 3 course and then the waves to go through the level 4 so we have been guinea pigs the whole way though the programme. Some of these changes were caused by government changes but they could have been handled better at AO.

My team are really supportive, I have weekly catch ups with my manager to ensure I am always handling the work load whilst also achieving as much as I can. Other members of the team have also been really helpful as they always had time to show me new things and he’ll in the beginning.

We have had 2 training providers so far, both not being great. The training provider we have for our level 4 only comes in every 2 months to see us. When we started our level 4 I missed the intro meeting due to circumstances out of my control and they never arranged for a separate one for me, it took a few weeks of emailing back and forth before they arranged a call for me so they could outline the course and I could ask any questions I had, I found this quite poor in terms of support.

The qualifications are quite theoretical so the stuff you are learning Day to day I find a lot more valuable then the qualification. It can often be quite vague. At AO we are specialists in our areas so it’s hard to put into practice a lot of what we are learning about in the workshop as it isn’t what our job role is.

All the apprentices has to do their gold DofE award during their first 18 months. This included residentials, volunteering in our own time and expeditions. We did our final 70km canoeing expedition across Scotland. This was extremely challenging and took most of us out of our comfort zone but it is a great achievement to have.

Yes

AO has a great culture and is defiantly a good business to start our your career. I would probably not recommend the apprenticeship program however. It would be better to try and get a junior role then you can get all the experience without having the time and pay restrictions of an apprentice.

To be yourself. They are looking for the 5 business values and whether you demonstrate them so be ready for questions and tasks based on; Bold, Care, Fun, Driven, Smart. An interview question I remember is ‘if you were an appliance what would you be’ have an answer ready for that.