Ellie’s news - February 2020

For me, the issue wasn’t deciding what career path I wanted to take but how I was going to get there. Business had always been my favourite subject at school and so I spent the last year at Adams in total conflict with myself- I didn’t want to miss out on university life but I also felt a degree apprenticeship in business would offer greater opportunity. I’d spent a lot of time researching different apprenticeships available, and even more time applying, but I wasn’t really getting anywhere. This amplified my stress levels, as not only was an apprenticeship the less popular route, it was also much harder! Eventually results day came and I decided my best option was to have a gap year; if I was going to miss out on going to university, I wanted to make sure I got an apprenticeship that was right for me. The number of apprenticeships I applied for were endless but eventually in November 2019 I received the news that I had secured a business management degree apprenticeship with Capgemini, and I would be starting at the end of March 2020.

When the pandemic hit, I assumed any hope of me starting my apprenticeship was out of the window. Everyone had been told to work from home for the foreseeable future and so I couldn’t understand how they’d be able to take on any new starters and train them up. Thankfully I was very wrong! I started my apprenticeship in June 2020 from home. I’ve been at the company for nearly nine months now and the only person I’ve met is my manager back at my interview. Working from home has taken a lot of getting used to; I’m a very sociable person and enjoy working with other people, so the inability to simply turn and chat to someone was a real struggle, but I quickly learned that my team were only a message away and were always happy to help.

Typically, at the start of the programme in September, apprentices spend eight weeks living on campus at Aston University, completing an Accelerated Learning Environment module that contributes to the degree. This was something I was really looking forward to as it provides a great compromise between the conventional university experience and an apprenticeship. It also gives a great opportunity to build relationships with the rest of your cohort, something that was very important to me as most of my friends are at university. Due to the pandemic, this unfortunately had to be moved online and so I’ve not been able to meet any of the other apprentices on my cohort. To my surprise however, this hasn’t been as big a problem as I thought it would be. We have regular calls and have big plans for when we can eventually go into the office.

Currently my work is focused on continuous improvement initiatives within the service side of the HMRC account. My absence of knowledge around the account, something I thought was a huge disadvantage, has been really beneficial in recognising which ways of working might no longer be as effective. I’ve been brought in to question anything that doesn’t make sense and then collaborate with the rest of the team to reinforce more effective solutions. I assumed that as an apprentice I might not have that much to offer to the team but its been great to have so much responsibility, take ownership of different initiatives and see how my contributions have impacted the work we do.

Capgemini is a global IT consultancy with offices in over 40 different countries, so although I’m currently based in Telford, I hope that over the coming years I will be able to travel with work a lot more. Other apprentices at Capgemini have had the opportunity to work all over the world and so hopefully, once the pandemic has eased, the opportunity will still be there for me to do the same. From a young age I’ve always been interested in owning my own business and so I aim to use the knowledge and experience gained during my apprenticeship to one day make this aspiration a reality.