Technology Degree Apprentice Review

My role was to work within the Sales and Marketing function to create and develop technical solutions for campaign work. This involves developing web pages and emails as well as ensuring that our pages are robust by checking any errors which occur on our pages and to report/deal with any ongoing errors.

Since starting my placement my skills I've written a lot of different types of code. I have used javascript, Javascript Object Notation (JSON), Hypertext Markup Language (html), Server-side Javascript (SSJS), Structured Query Language (SQL) and ampscript mainly. I have also learnt how to build email journeys for our email recipients.

I have really enjoyed my placement. I get on with everyone in my team well and found the experience of working with my team really useful. I have also enjoyed being able to meet new people from outside my team. The team I am in sits in our internal firm services LoS so I get to meet lots of people from different areas of the business.

We get lots of support in our programme. We have quarterly meetings with someone from the university and someone from the company to discuss our progress both from an academic and professional point of view. The team I have worked with have had a very clear structure from the very beginning of my placement.

We receive some support from our employer. This mainly comes in the form of our quarterly meetings. We don't get to see our apprenticeship lead very often as they are based in London. This doesn't make much sense to me as none of the apprenticeship programmes are based in London.

We receive some support from the university regarding working towards our qualifications. In the first year of my degree the support was much more prominent but in the second year this seemed to reduce. I believe COVID-19 may have been responsible for this but I also thing that the university could have transitioned to online learning much more effectively.

One of the few problems I have experienced with my apprenticeship is that our day-to-day work does not tend to involve a lot of the skills we learn during our degree. The work can be quite mundane at times. Although the work I have done has been reasonably technical it is nowhere near the level of the work we produce during Univeristy.

There are lots of opportunities to socialise at PwC. I am a big football fan and play every week with my work colleagues. There's lots of team socials organised in London which everyone has the chance to attend and all expenses have been paid for. This is definitely one of the better aspects of this course.

Yes

Since I started working at the company they have been excellent. Throughout the pandemic we never had to worry about our salary (even though one of our work placements got cancelled) and we had support available throughout the many lockdowns. I think now more than ever that this is one of the most important things that a company can provide.

Ensure that you are open-minded about the work that you may experience during your placement. Although other year in industries may provide more technical work, the work that you may experience at PwC is also very good. Researching the company is also a must. PwC is such a huge company that you need to look into the many different services we provide.