Apprentice Review

I'm a DT Degree Apprentice, so in general you work with data or code. However the course at E.ON works on 6 month placements- so every 6 months you go to another part of the business, this means while you'll normally always be doing something to do with data or coding- a part of your job is constantly changing- so for example so far I have done architecture and worked with our sustainability team. You get to pick where you go as most places are very happy to have your help so you can do a lot of different things. Also this is more random and barely happens but you sometimes do events, like careers fairs. The last part of the role again is more random- but all of us DT apprentices have a team that handles random projects occasionally.

Yes, coming out of school and going straight into a degree apprenticeship means you kind of have to learn new skills unless you've built them up before coming outside of school. I've learnt a lot more about coding at University, while I have learnt more data orientated and business related content at work. Everyone so far has been very supportive about picking up new skills and has given me time to learn- in fact I'd say learning new skills is very much encouraged.

Coming in I wasn't really sure what to expect and it definitely wasn't quite what I imagined it'd be- by far the worst part of the role is the university work, but the amount of university work is less compared to what you'd have to do if you, well went to university. But at work I quite enjoy it, everyone's nice and the work is interesting enough. I enjoy some of the random requests I get to- always keeps it varied.

Pretty well organised- as said earlier the course is structured in 6 month blocks- you are required to move on after 6 months, but I believe you could go back for a later placement if you really wanted. University currently is structured like so: 3 times a year go into university (Clifton campus, NTU) to do 2 weeks of lecturers/tutorials, then across the next 7 weeks after you have coursework, for myself the Fridays we are given to do university work is enough (so far at least)- but I have known others to need more time. This also means there are times where you have no University work, you can then use your Fridays to do your job, or to develop some skills. However worth noting NTU is looking to change their course structure, so it may change to a more ongoing thing, where you would go like once a week or once every other week, and have smaller coursework projects. Any complaints I would have with structure is the universities fault, and will be the same at any university.

As I said earlier in terms of development (which to me is the whole point of the course), it really good, E.ON has a pretty good learning platform with a lot of resources and video tutorials, and people in general are always willing to help from my experience. There's lots of communities to help with inclusion to.

If I'm being honest this wildly depends on your lecturer, some are really good and will respond pretty quickly to any questions, give good feedback and are just decent teachers. Some lecturers aren't as good. Though in terms of support outside of individual modules it's decent, I wouldn't say they do anything above and beyond, but I haven't felt not supported either.

The qualification is coding based (though this may change), which is a good skill to upskill in, though that said I find myself working with data more than pure code, though more complicated tasks can require you to code. There aren't many coding placements at E.ON in the UK- but this may change in the future (also you can do international placements where you would be coding all the time). Because of this the training from the qualification, while useful for your general career, may not be super useful at E.ON (could be but may not be). Though the fields are all adjacent and normally there is crossover. I personally find learning different areas helps me with all kinds of stuff and although 6 months in have never coded- it looks like I'll be starting to utilise what I have learnt ion python a lot more. Some lecturers at university will be useless and you will get nothing out of them- but what is useless to me might be very useful for someone else.

I don't know how much official stuff there is outside of our online communities that sometimes hold events, though within the degree apprentices sometimes we go out as a big group- also while not officially E.ON, some of the degree apprentices have a 5v5 Football team which you can probably join. There could be stuff i'm just not ware of.

Yes

It's a good workplace and from my experience so far they genuinely care about their apprentices and nurturing them into being employees- they take people wanting them to turn into full time employees, I don't think E.ON is perfect, no company will be, but they are pretty good.

I think just having some confidence will go a long way- during the interview process they want to find good employees so they're trying to look for your strengths not necessarily your issues. Just try and relax and be yourself. Though i will say if you did something really stupid at some point in your life (like have a fight in front of a chippy), do not bring it up at the interview. Also be prepared with examples of how you can show you have key skills (like leadership, team work, creativity etc..) and with each time you give an example or story of something that shows these skills i think it's also good to talk about what you learnt from the experience and what you would do differently next time.