National Apprenticeship Week Kristian's Apprenticeship Journey

For National Apprenticeship Week 2024 we wanted to share our individual Apprenticeship experiences as an insight in to the different ways Apprenticeships can impact a role. Whether it's doing an apprenticeship ourselves, supporting apprentice's within the business or supporting training providers to find the right people to support their apprentice's, we've covered them all. Here's how we've found apprenticeships so far!

• Kristian's Apprenticeship Journey
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• Since leaving school at 16, Apprenticeships have been at the heart of my career. I enjoyed school but always knew A-levels and University wasn’t for me, instead I was set on getting an apprenticeship to learn skills for life and build a career I could be proud of. I was lucky enough to be offered an Apprenticeship working for a training provider in July of 2015 as a sales Apprentice and since then, I haven’t looked back. An apprenticeship allowed me to learn on the job from experienced and supportive colleagues whilst working towards a qualification that supported my development. Not only did I start my career as an apprentice myself but I also had the privilege of supporting hundreds of aspiring apprentice’s to start their own career journeys as midway through my apprenticeship, I was promoted to a recruitment consultant to help 16-24 year olds secure apprenticeships. Being an apprentice myself, I knew exactly how impactful this form of work based learning could be and I was able to support young people to prepare for interviews and employment in the exact same way I did just 6 months earlier.
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• Working for a training provider was great because we really did practice what we preached and took on a number of apprentice’s to work within the business and start their careers. As my career progressed I found myself in the fortunate position of mentoring and helping to train new apprentice’s in the organisation and saw first-hand how impactful and successful apprenticeships could be not only for the learner but also for the employer. I saw numerous colleagues go from school leavers with no experience to extremely knowledgeable, skilled and successful top performing recruitment consultant’s which was all made possible by the organisation putting faith in the Apprenticeship scheme.
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In my experience, apprenticeships aren’t just a foot in the door to future employment but they offer people the chance to start their personal learning journey, gain skills for life and achieve qualifications that not only open doors in the future, but help support the fundamentals of someone’s day to day job. After completing my first level 2 apprenticeship in Business Admin, I started a level 3 Recruitment apprenticeship which taught me some of the most important skills that I utilise in my job every day and with my future career prospects in mind I finished my apprenticeship journey (for now) by completing a Team Leading apprenticeship. 8 years on from starting my journey as an apprentice, I use the skills and knowledge I gained from my last apprenticeship every day to mentor and support Educated Appointments very own apprentice as she begins what will be to another of the millions of success stories made possible by the Apprenticeship programme.

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