Enjoying doing a job on my apprenticeship which I believed would become my future career became second nature to me and I was very competent with the ever growing tasks and responsibilities being assigned to me. My previous role was in a Windows Server Management team in which I was a Backup and Restore team member; I was familiar with physical server infrastructure from college so this was not completely new to me. Soon enough I was on-call for my team which required me to come in to the office at times out of hours to ensure that our client’s (government) data and IT infrastructure were running like clockwork by restoring data and making sure it is backing up correctly. This gained the attention of managers who were associated with my team and my input to the team was being recognised.

However, alongside the job role I was heavily involved within the Fujitsu Apprentice community which involved; attending meetings to shape the apprenticeships Fujitsu provide, better young people’s careers within the company, networking with people for collaboration and introducing new starters in to the company and apprentice community shortly after they started. I attended events in which I had the opportunity to meet executive personnel in the Fujitsu hierarchy. Appearing on good news stories, Fujitsu intranet website, and having the chance of spending half a day with the managing director of the Fujitsu government account were all things I participated in with my involvement in the apprentice community. The opportunity came around when my line manager asked me to stay behind on shift to have a chat about an opportunity within a brand new team to be formed in the pipeline. We discussed in depth different factors regarding my current job and the potential new one. I had concerns as to how much skill I would be required to have but I was assured that I would be taught a dynamic set of brand new skills with new technology. I was slightly hesitant at first, which now seems silly, but I realised there and then that this is an opportunity. Managers will always say to take opportunities and this can sound very boring and generic, but if you don’t take them you will not prosper, improve or advance your career and in turn your life. Before I left the office I gave my manager the confirmation that I would be moving in to this team and advancing my career in IT.

Once I had met the management of this new team I realised why I had been chosen to be involved with this fascinating new project; because of a mixture of my ability and work ethic in Server Management and also because of regularly taking part in any apprentice based activity through the Apprentice Community in Fujitsu. This allowed networking with other people as I mentioned before, gaining exposure was vital for being selected for this secondment opportunity.

This team is now known in Fujitsu as the FAST Cloud Infrastructure Support team, seen by everybody as the way forward and the future of Fujitsu. It is also the future of IT because this team is all about Cloud computing and virtualisation technology using VMware (a vendor of virtualisation and cloud technology) suites. The HMRC (our client) have given their full support to this new Cloud solution.

I have been given a great platform going forward in this secondment because IT is now entering a new era by going in to Cloud and Virtual computing. This is going to be the foundation and ultimately will become the basics and fundamentals of the era. So for me to be able to gain knowledge on such vital technology before it becomes huge is definitely a strong and positive foundation to build my career upon.

5 months in to the secondment I have slowly been picking up a lot of skills in VMware, becoming a VMware certified associate along the way. I have also completed a week’s course in Central London about a specific VMware application called vSphere, which is the heart of this new solution for HMRC. I have been getting up to various other development work which for certain reasons cannot be disclosed but these things are very high profile and confidential, and I’ve always believed this sort of work will keep me focused at all times as we need minimal if not zero fault tolerance in the company.

My advice to somebody wanting to have a change in job role or being offered a secondment is to take it, take any opportunity that comes your way. Ask a lot of questions when you are in such a situation. Below are examples:

What skills are required before joining?

How long is the secondment?

Is the outcome for me personally positive?

What will I learn?

What career plans will I/can I explore during the secondment?

How will this help me give make to the company as they’ve invested in me?

Take any opportunity given to you, learn as much as possible because it will only benefit your career in a host of different ways.