Telent is a large company that nobody's ever heard of we sit behind a lot of telecommunications
equipment and information that's run around the UK there's a stat that says about 95%
of the UK population interact with something that Telent maintain or install on a day to day basis
signage on motorways electronic signage on motorway's customer information on railway
station so PA systems and the signs that tell you what time your train will be coming in that's
all Telent and there's so many different jobs that's financial jobs installation jobs there's
you name it you can you can that sort of role in Telent you can have a career of
40 years doing 20/30 different roles but stay in Telent to do that so I've been in the rail
industry all my career started as a British Rail apprentice many many years ago 29 years ago now
at 16 I have no idea what to do for a career but after those three years of my apprenticeship I’d
seen many different avenues and knew which one or had a feeling which one I wanted to go down
we take on a number of apprentices each year but do a college course that's based around
telecoms and then we expose them to the railway environment of what Telent do on the railway
as part of that is 3 years programme where they come out with a qualification at the end of that
and the ability to again choose what role they want to do the apprenticeship that we offer
shows that many different aspects of the rail business and they can choose from there rather
than trying to pigeon hole them in we try to let them find the route that they want only
I design the apprenticeship programmes I work very closely with our apprenticeship providers whether
that’s colleges or learning providers to create programmes that suit what our needs are just
below 100 apprentices that work at Telent at the moment overall we’ve had 216 apprentices through
Telent we advertise across all sorts of job boards including our own website once somebody applies we
will have a recruitment team looking through their suitability based upon competencies set out in
the advert if they match the majority of those competencies then they’ll get a call from our
recruitment team a face to face assessment centre will consist generally of again at 3 different
activities one where we will interview them and that is just a standard competency interview one
where we will do a group activity where they will need to accomplish something as a group
of people so we can see how they interact with other people and thirdly we ask them to do a
solo activity we select entirely based upon those scores to make sure we have a very fair process.
We know that some people will be really hands on and actually there may be the most amazing
engineer tinkering something but ultimately may not be able to to conduct a presentation
and we fully appreciate that and we want to give everybody that opportunity to shine in every
single way that they can we think it's important that our apprentices support each other and that’s
what sending away on outward bound to go camping and to go climbing and to solve problems together
for a week really does achieve that teamwork every apprentice and every graduate also has a
mentor in place that they can turn to and we make sure these mentors are quite well separated from
what they do in their day to day job we do make sure that they have that impartiality of a mentor
So I've just entered year 2 hopefully completing my Level 3 in December at Telent it's management
accounting so a lot of our finances are project based so you get to delve into quite a lot of
detail and you get to support other people in actually understanding the financial
side as well at the moment I'm running reports making sure we staying up to date on my costing
I was doing my AS Levels and I wasn’t progressing as well as I was hoping so I ended up going into a
full time job and figuring out what I wanted to do because obviously you hear the word apprenticeship
and you go oh yeah that's an option but you never actually get shown the government website for it
you never get shown what opportunities there are out there it was only after sort of its
five month period of trying to figure out what you want to do I started looking to see what was
out there and I realised that finance really worked for me it works with what I'm good at
I then found Telent eventually and I went through an application process here and I got it.
After the interview phone call it was then the assessment day and we just basically spent the
day learning who the other candidates were meeting people from Telent talking with them
looking back on it you’re their going there really were thorough they really were just
looking for that right fit for them so it's not just finance looking at numbers all day everyday
the meetings that I go into my find out about the projects that I'm working on so it's very much an
all encompassing job purely I found it from Find my Apprenticeship and when I
did my research into the company I went how have I never heard of this before. We have
team meetings in one of my rotations and the team meetings generally called for a take out
delivery and it's that communication between the entire team as much as you know food was involved
you’re not just pushed to the side because you’re an apprentice you are part of the team
learning on the job it's something you won’t experience elsewhere my main advice would just
be to keep a complete open mind have looked what’s out there even if you're not at that point yet
just knowing what's out there is a really good place to start
At first I did a levels I wasn’t really enjoying them and so I looked into something I would enjoy
I thought the apprenticeship would be the best route for me as I’m not really that academic
and I didn’t really enjoy school so apprenticeship allows you to learn and learn on the job hands on
I really enjoyed working on smart motorway projects so that's going on
roadside and the big projects and so smart motorway installing new kits for the networks
on fibre cables copper cables switches CCTV cameras installing all things like that on the
motorway I really enjoyed that I also really enjoyed some of the opportunity of learning
a piece of equipment and configuring that as well so it's really boosted my knowledge on networking
training is every Monday so that's like my apprenticeship day so that's where I’m to do all
my college work with Intequal whose are provider they’re a really good providers that's really good
thing also I've got excellent support from my line manager I’ve gone on electrical engineer on the
government website for apprentices and this has popped up it’s different but we kind of overlaps
are second year now in my first year when I joined I had no experience of the things I
do which in networking it was all really fresh so in my first year I was shadowing a lot I was
going roadside I was also going to dip like day centres and test centres and shadowing and my
second year which I've started now only do it for two months previous but I've been trusted because
I’ve done it for a year and I can get on with the job and do it on my own but also at the College
was a big step up so it’s a bit more advanced learning so with Telent I found that the support
that is available is unbelievable really everyone's really patient especially with me
because I’ve got no experience which is obvious with apprentices you’ve got no experience every
everyone's took so much time out everyone just wants you to do the best of your ability even when
I’ve had exams or when I’ve done stuff for college have been important I’ve had a lot of messages and
support like from my fellow colleagues and it's just a really good place to work to be honest