Apprenticeships can be a great opportunity and alternative to university. You can do an apprenticeship in pretty much any role that you want to get into and it really helps you think whether you want to go into the area after the apprenticeship. I knew that I didn’t want to go to university and sit in a lecture hall for three years and learn about topics in that way as that never suited my way of learning. I’m going to go into more detail about why an apprenticeship is right for you:
- Hands on experience and learning on the job
If you are like me and you are ready to leave school and not sit in a classroom and learn from a textbook anymore and want to get out into the world and learn by actually doing something while getting hands-on experience then an apprenticeship is the best thing for you. As well as this you are learning industry best practises from people who are the industry leaders and are so valuable to your progression. I believe that the best way of learning is by making mistakes and this apprenticeship welcomes that and accepts that everyone at some point in their apprenticeship will make mistakes, it’s the learnings you take from it and advice from your team on how to improve whatever it is. Furthermore you gain help and support from your team and apprentice provider which is invaluable as it is just you and getting personalised advice and progression from those people rather than having 20 other people all having mentorship at the same time, this means you can really go into detail about your progression and what you can do to really make the most of the opportunity.
- Getting a taste in the area to see if you like it
I believe that apprenticeships are the best way to learn and get a real taste into what an area/ role is really like to see whether you want to go into it in the future. This means that you have the freedom during the apprenticeship to learn about all the different jobs and responsibilities people have within the industry and by talking or shadowing these people you can find out if this is really something that you want to get into or if it wasn’t what you thought but during the shadowing or talking you found another role that you never knew existed but would love to do and can see yourself doing it.
- Building your network
In addition to all the points above, one reason why you might want to do an apprenticeship that people don’t think of is building your professional network. As you are working alongside industry leaders in their field and while you can learn a lot from them those people are sure to know other industry leaders either within the company which you can talk to but also outside of your company that you could speak to to see how their company differs from yours but also learn about their journey and experience but also for yourself to get noticed and remembered so that in the future if any opportunities come up they will think about that person who was very passionate and wanted to get into this industry in the future and might ask you to help or join the company. Using these connections that people may have is really important as in the future you would have connections and networks with lots of different people from different industries and companies and relationships you can leverage.
Hopefully from this you have really thought about whether apprenticeships are right for you and if you had never thought about it in the past but now are sold on the idea then I am glad you chose to do an apprenticeship and i’m sure you will get just as much out of it as I have and most importantly enjoy every second of your experience as its an opportunity that doesn’t come around often.
