Read on to hear Paige, Rory, Ellie and Xena talk about their journey from studying to employment...
Paige Simons
Paige is working towards her Business Administration Level 2 NVQ through Chesterfield College and has been an apprentice at P3 for three months.
“I did some research on P3 when I saw the job and you can tell that you’re doing something that’s going to benefit other people; it’s not all about you.”
“My assessor, Rose, comes here once a month and marks my work as I upload it electronically, so you can see your progress going up. I’m doing my Level 2 qualification but I know that my colleague did her Level 3 here so there is that opportunity to progress.
“At sixth form, they didn’t talk about apprenticeships, they strive for you to go to university but it’s such a good thing, I think, for young people to do something like this because once you’ve got that qualification, you can take that anywhere, even if you decide you don’t want to stay at the place where you did your apprenticeship. That qualification will stay with me for life.”
Rory Thompson
Rory started at P3 as an apprentice three years ago and now works as an IT Support Technician.
“The working environment here has really helped with the transition between going from studying to work – on an apprenticeship, you have to learn quick and adapt to how people do things, which I prefer.
“The IT qualifications I came out with were CompTIA and Network+. The first one is a standard support qualification that takes you through the Windows operating systems and the second one dives deeper into networking, servers, DNS and so on, which is recognised by Microsoft as well.
“I’d like to do more web design and development next, and as a side project, robotics. This job has actually helped a lot to learn how that works, mainly through learning Arduino [software to create motorised or interactive objects]."
