Assembly apprentice Review

My home department is assembly however I spend my day to day jobs on placements in different departments around the company to gain different experiences and job roles. I myself have spent time looking at quality and planning roles but within different departments to understand various processes and methods to achieve the topics in hand. Each placement lasts around 3 months each.

Doing placements in different departments that consist of different elements i have been able to work on plenty different aspects that have developed my own skills while also learning new ones. In terms of new skills learned, a lot of focus from one placement involved the use of problem solving which meant I was able to learn the relevant techniques to enable me to do so. Another big area comes down to presentations, originally being fairly shy, I have been able to to learn how to present data from my work as well my ability to present with confidence has ensured that I'm clear and understandable of which has drastically improved.

More recently I have really enjoyed what I've been doing as I am seeing myself not only become more knowledgeable in the relevant areas of the business but also seeing myself grow as a person, the experiences I am having have been very valuable in the growth of my development.

The college side of things is set to one day release per week, that being the on the same week day. On the work side of things the organisation of what I'm doing is down to myself and the managers I work with. In general from my own experiences this has been good as my development plan is clear and I'm aware of what ill be doing in future during my apprenticeship. In my case this is good but I could see how this may differ from each apprentice and manager, depending on what they put into it.

I feel that I receive plenty of support from my employers and those that work around me. If an issue occurs and I feel that I need help on the topic then I know who I am able to go to and if this is not the case then I'm aware that those I do go to will be able to point me in the right direction to someone that would be able to help.

Over the whole programme I have felt that the level of support has been good from those at the college. In my first years i had personal issues of which I was able to gain some very helpful support at the time which aided in the reduction of stress at the time. More recently (past year) the level of support is still good as I know as before who I can go to if I require support for both the relevant help of my qualification topics or those outside of college itself.

For the past year I have found two particular units quite helpful in my day to day business. These revolved around project management and product design. These two units were very helpful on how to organise and structure my work of which i have been able to apply to what I'm doing at work. I understand why math's and science are also part of the contents however far less of this carries over to what I'm actually doing for my jobs/placement's.

There are some activities, some groups do activities to raise money for house charity's of which people can get involved in. There are some instances of networking events within the company so that people can be introduced to one another in instances where there day to day jobs would not lead to. Due to recent times there has been less of these and have been moved to online tools such as teams.

Yes

If the individual is willing to put the work in, there is so much that they can learn on a technical and skill based side of things, however on a personal development side of things it has been great to allow younger people to grow and gain maturity in a working environment while gaining such valuable work experience.

Be willing and prepared to put the work in while ensuring that you can make the most of each opportunity that arises so that you are able to gain as much exposure as possible. This allows you to learn and develop areas of yourself or skillset that you will most likely carry through to the rest of your career. Working and studying at the same time can be tough but an overall perspective allows you to understand all the benefits of not only learning what's required for a qualification but of that in a working environment.