1st year degree apprentice Review

We start by having the opportunity and time to meet other engineers that work in the business as well as being involved in a first year project that teaches us skills that will be required as a future engineer, once this 1st year is done we will be involved in rotations around the business.

I have learned how to work in a team during projects by using everyone s different opinions to achieve a common goal, manage my time for the different tasks I have to do through the day and meeting deadlines, creating relationships with other employees in order to find the support needed when working on projects.

I enjoy it a lot as it allows me to do what I am interested in in a professional environment to make useful projects, we get to meet people that have the same interests as us and the opportunity to work with them, we are also well supported in every tasks that we do.

Our programme is organised really well, we can tell that the employer has a timeline for our apprenticeship as we start with learning about the site and business areas and then start small rotations after we have discovered the site, then when we have rotation experience we go to do bigger rotations.

We receive a lot of support from the employer, if someone has any question about anything we can ask and receive an answer to our question soon after, we got encouraged to build our network too so that if when we have a question we know who to ask based on the topic to receive an answer quickly.

This is the down part of the apprenticeship as our training provider is UWE and from my experience they are not really good as there have been few problems with the spellings on exams making no sense and the resources we receive are not helpful, I have had to learn about my subject by myself using the internet only.

The subject we learn about does help for some tasks, but feels really useless in the way that it is taught as there would be a lot quicker ways to learn these skills than the way that universities try to teach it. I do use my degree knowledge during work time when working on projects.

Yes, there are a few groups of sporting activities such as a 5 a side football game, mountain biking groups, hiking groups, a gym where you can go with other employees, and you can come up with anything you want and try to promote it to others for them to join.

Yes

If you are passionate about the subject that you are going into GE will give you many opportunities to use that interest in a professional environment by giving you many different opportunities to work with that interest or find new interests, there are multiple career vocations that you can take through the business.

Be a good team worker, do not get in there thinking that it is all about what you can do, they want you to be able to work with other people in your team to achieve a common goal so be open to talk to others and know what strengths each individual has.