Chartered Management Degree Apprenticeship Review

Working and training in store at Dunelm in preparation to become store managers by the end of the apprenticeship, alongside completing our degree in management we will be trained in different areas of the store to gather as much experience before it's time to become a manager

New skills I have been able to develop include a lot of self management skills, having to manage both effective progression amongst the business and maintaining the degree element to a strong standard requires good time management skills, as well as good management of others in stores

I agree to a good extent that I enjoy my programme, it provides a lot more experiences than I would gain from a normal job or degree, I enjoy my day to day job developing new skills and learning new things about the business

The plan for our step up pathway throughout different positions within store is well structured and provides a clear outline, whereas at times it can be more difficult to pencil in time for uni based OTJ hours, particularly when stores are busy

I believe I receive strong levels of support from Dunelm as I have a number of points of call should it be required, I have both my line manager in store as well as certain colleagues that provide training alongside a support team in head office for anything that cannot be solved in store

This can be dependant on how busy we are in stores, if there is a lot to do work related it can be more difficult to get time and support for uni work but Dunelm are flexible should we need to remove ourselves from work for a few hours in order to have time for assignments etc...

It helps in the understanding of how a business runs and thinking about time management skills to balance not only uni work, but logging OTJ hours and building up our portfolio, attending uni allows for deeper thinking during the work day into how what you are working on is being influenced by uni and vice versa

There are good opportunities to network with head office, particularly people on graduate schemes, as well as good opportunities for social activities within store to build strong relationships with colleagues

Yes

It is an interesting company to work for that allows you to provide strong relationships with colleagues both in store and other apprentices, as well as gaining new experiences through the degree element of the role

Learn to be flexible as it is unlikely that everything will go exactly how you imagine, and pace yourself as there is a lot to learn and it won't all be attainable at once