My Apprentice job summed up

As an apprentice I joined a very technical team, which meant expectations of me were high and I had to perform to the best of my ability. During my apprenticeship, I had the pleasure to be involved with client projects and I was working my way towards being an application packager. Joining a large company like Atos was great because I always had something to work towards within the job role and this was the main reason why I chose an apprenticeship over University. I think that undertaking an apprenticeship is a good career path to take and especially in an organisation such as Atos which is such a prestigious company which is very established within the IT industry, where I had the opportunity to progress further within the company whilst gaining qualifications.

What impact do you feel you had during your apprenticeship?

I joined the apprenticeship because I wanted a challenge in something that would test my abilities on a daily basis. My skills and knowledge base extended greatly during my apprenticeship due to the support from the rest of the team. I was trusted with client work which involved liaising with the client to see what their requirements were for an application and whether this was feasible. This gave me a lot more confidence and was very rewarding and motivating to be trusted with client work. I developed into a great contributor to the team.

What did you learn during your apprenticeship?

During my apprenticeship my technical understanding excelled massively in a short period of time. When I first started I had just A-Level knowledge of IT and that couldn’t compare to the technicality of the job, my IT skills rapidly advanced during my apprenticeship and I continued to gain knowledge in one of the most complex IT careers. I think that’s why this apprenticeship was such a good opportunity as this is a job role that someone with a lot of experience of working within the industry would need to enter our team, however the internal training academy gave young people the chance to work their way up to being a successful application packager.

As an apprentice I was involved in the national Brathay Apprentice Challenge, through the Brathay Trust charity. We visited local schools to tell them about what it’s like to be an Apprentice; we were involved in a local church restoration project, as well as visiting a local care home for the elderly to teach them IT Skills. It was great fun and is gave me a great opportunity to develop a range of new skills through Atos involvement in the challenge.

What are you doing now?

After completing my apprenticeship, I got offered a role within the User Application Management Team as an Application Packager. This role entails packaging applications for clients which includes 3 processes, Discovery, Packaging and Quality Assurance.

Over the past few years, our team has innovated greatly taking over the Testing and Deployment stages of the application lifecycle. This meant learning to test the applications we packaged across different client accounts. Currently my main job role is to test applications on specific accounts. It is important that I work professionally with other teams across Atos such as Project Managers and Technical Architects to ensure we get the best possibly quality in everything we do. I plan to continue to work within Atos and work my way up within the business.