An update on my apprenticeship!

I have now been with Rathbones just under a year and it is still going well! I have completed my three months on the Network and Infrastructure team and enjoyed it a lot as it gave me an insight into how the different offices at Rathbones are all connected and the different services that are provided to help maintain the network. After spending three months on this team, I had to choose another team to work with for three months and I decided to spend it with the Investment Management Systems delivery team. This team supports the applications RID and Rhymesight so I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn a bit more about the business. I have been on this team for over a month now and have been shown various problems that users have had with the applications and gone through how to deal with these. We try and recreate the issue in a test environment and then log a call with the software suppliers to let them know that there is an issue, they then fix the problem and send us a patch/fix file that we then install and test whether the problem has been fixed in the test area. If it has, the software is then installed to the live environment and the issue is resolved! So I am now looking forward to working on a team for one full year so I can focus fully on that team and specialise what it is that I decide to do.

On the NVQ side of things, I have sent my last piece of evidence off to Joanne at Archbishop Beck and hopefully that should tick off my last unit and I’ll have completed it all. Working on the teams for a longer period of time has really helped me complete the NVQ easier than I thought it would and this is because working on the team for three months gives me more work to do that I can use as evidence for my portfolio to back up the candidate statements I had written so I was working and completing the portfolio at the same time.

Six months into my apprenticeship

I have now completed six months of my apprenticeship at Rathbones and it is going just as well as it had been when I last posted! I have now spent four weeks on each team within the IT department and this included visiting the Bristol office to set up PCs for new users and just last week I went to the London office with my team leader to attend some meetings he had there. This was a good chance to meet the members of the IT department that are based in the London office, who are just as friendly and welcoming as those in Liverpool.

After completing four weeks on each team I had to choose one team to go on to for three months. My preferred team to work on for this length of time was the Network and Infrastructure team. This team ensures that the Rathbones computer and telephone network are always connected and secure. The tasks I have been carrying out so far are setting up new users telephone accounts for them, so that they are able to log in when they are sat at their desk, adding people to different pickup groups so that they can pick up other people’s phone calls, adding diverts to their phones and so on. I have also done some work on the firewall side of the network and hopefully I will be able to do more as the opportunities arise! Soon I will be taking on the job of doing the network checks. These are checks that have to be carried out each morning to ensure that there are no issues on the network, and if there are any issues that they are logged and rectified correctly. The guys on the team have been very helpful in explaining the tasks they carry out and they’ve been getting me involved as much as they can and it is a great team to be working on!

As well choosing this team to work on for three months I have also had to work on my NVQ portfolio, which is coming along nicely, I have been able to tick off much more since I have been on this team for a longer period of time and am on course to complete it for the summer. After that I should be starting to look at IT specific qualifications to study for in the second year of the apprenticeship which I am eager to get started on!

The difference between school and work

For the first few weeks, it felt so strange getting up each morning to go to work as I had been used to the routine of getting up and going to school, having lessons, lunch and so on forever! But I was now getting up earlier in order to get the train over to Liverpool and that alone took some getting used to as I lived round the corner from my school and could get there easily! What I also had to get used to was just having one, one hour long break as I was used to having a break and then having lunch, I adjusted to this easily it just felt very different to start off with.

Another thing that I had to get used to was the way in which although I am learning whilst on the job, I am in work to do a job whereas at school I was there to learn about the subjects I was studying and to pass my exams. In work I can get a sense of achievement after completing a piece of work and even more so if I do not need any help with completing that piece of work! Obviously, if I need help I ask for it and everybody in the office are willing to help me out, but being able to do your work without help feels that little bit better!

That leads me to my next point. Being able to complete your workload gives you that satisfaction and you get extra satisfaction at the reality of being paid at the end of each month. It’s okay feeling good when you finally get your head around a topic for an exam in school/university, but you don’t get paid for it! Getting paid at the end of the month for completing jobs makes me feel more independent as I can now pay for things like my own phone contract and car insurance. It makes you manage the money available to you which I’ve also found important too!