Seven months ago, we joined the team at Access as Project Management and Web Development Apprentices. We joined with little experience having come straight from finishing college. Over this time, we’ve learned a lot of valuable things about the industry and agency life, as well as the importance of learning new skills along the way. As apprentices, we both agree that it’s essential to remember that our main goal is to learn and to grow. At the end of our apprenticeship we want to be equipped with as much knowledge and experience as we can get! We’re surrounded by people with years and years of experience on subjects we want to know more about, so we have to make the most of this by asking questions and observing at all times.
Why should you learn?
Better yourself as an individual - Learning encourages you to better yourself within your work life. Whether it’s learning a lesson about how not to do something, or physically working towards a qualification, learning can greatly benefit the quality of your life. Have you ever made a mistake and repeated it again? The chances are you probably didn’t – which shows that you’ve learned from your mistake.
Broaden your knowledge - Why limit yourself to only knowing about one certain subject? If you want maximum gain out of your working life, then get to know other roles and functions of the business. It will only broaden your knowledge of how things work, which could benefit projects in future, as you will know exactly what’s involved in every part of the process. This particular step is something which we are working towards, as we want to get to know exactly how an agency works! We’ve had the chance to get involved with types of projects from digital to social, and also the documentation that’s involved within every process. It keeps us learning new things and also makes our roles at Access more fun and interesting.
Keep things interesting - One of the great things about apprenticeships is that you are learning something completely new to you and getting involved with a range of different things. Finding ways of linking your job role into other aspects of the business; or working alongside different colleagues, opens you up to a different working day, therefore keeps it interesting. Work is something that we look forward to because of this, so it’s good to switch things up, learn and keep your job interesting.
Our learning made a difference
Lauren: During my time at Access, I’ve found different ways to learn. You can learn online, from your colleagues or generally by experiencing different things within your working environment. One of the things I’ve learned is how different Project Management tools such as Slack and also Analytics tools such as Crazy Egg can benefit an agency or client.
A few months ago, I introduced Slack as a communication platform for our agency. I initially thought it would be something which would fade out; however, Slack has strengthened the communication between different team members. This is always important within agencies as we work to a lot of deadlines, therefore greater communication is always a more efficient way of getting tasks done. It was great for me as an apprentice, as it made me feel happy to think that I’d made a contribution to our agency. It’s definitely received some really positive feedback – especially from our Project Manager Ashley Johnson “Slack has enabled us to communicate quicker without disturbing the development team whilst their heads are in that rather complicated piece of code. On top of this we can easily share documents, code snippets and, of course, the Giphy integration!” Although this was just an initial suggestion, it was great to hear positive feedback about it and it was important for me to see how a simple tool can impact a business for all the right reasons! Slack has also proved to be enjoyable and I can honestly say there’s never a dull day in the office because of this.
Access has given me the opportunity to take whatever knowledge it may be that I have learned and put it into action. I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience and I am taking the time to learn as much as I can, as it will only benefit me more in the future! There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing you’re making a difference
Keenan: In my opinion, there is no better way to learn than to experience it first-hand. However, this is not always the case in a real working environment as people’s schedules can be filled very quickly, therefore it’s good to be pro-active by asking for work and making sure that you're always contributing. It shows that you have completed the tasks set and are eager to move on to the next job. There is not one defining answer to what I have brought to Access; I feel I am more of a package deal. It could be a number of things that I bring to the agency…
- skin tight jeans
- boyish charm
- bin full of chicken carcasses accumulated over my lunch breaks (I eat a whole chicken for lunch... every lunch... every day)
In parts, it’s all three of these things but most importantly I feel that I have a good work ethic and motivation to learn. In my time here at Access I have learned a lot and gained the trust of the other developers. I feel that I bring the ability to be given numerous types of work with the confidence from others to complete it successfully. In the future, I hope that I can bring even more to Access than I am able to now. Without the chance of an apprenticeship here at Access, I wouldn’t have learned half as much as I have and I’m going to continue to do my best.
Overall, we’re definitely finding our apprenticeships to be a positive experience. It’s really helped shape our understanding of different things and it’s even better to know that we’re always going to be learning. We definitely want to use the resources around us to help us progress further and we would really encourage others to embrace any learning experience they may have!
