Thinking of starting an apprenticeship?

Hi, my name is Danielle, I'm 21 years old and I recently completed my Level 3 Apprenticeship in Business Administration.

When I first joined Magna in August 2019 I was employed as an Apprentice Development & Wellbeing Administrator but I made the move to HR Services Administrator in July 2020.

I chose to do an apprenticeship in business admin as there's a wide variety of things you get to learn about, from finance and budgeting to legislation and customer services. I didn’t know when I first took this role if HR was going to be something I wanted to pursue as a career in the long term, so having a qualification that had such a variety of information felt like the right decision in case I decided HR wasn’t for me. This is a qualification that no matter what role I am doing in 10 years-time I can take something away from it.

It has taken me 15 months to complete the apprenticeship and it hasn’t always been easy! To start with I needed to complete modules on different sections. There were 3 stages to each module and my managers have been involved every step of the way to ensure I can learn as much about HR as possible. Once my modules were completed, I had to spend a lot of time creating a portfolio of all the work I had done in the past year. 20 pages later it was ready to be submitted. After this was submitted I started to go through my End Point Assessment which consisted of sitting an exam as well as taking part in an online interview where I was required to do a presentation on a project I had been working on.

For me the best bit of the course was completing my portfolio. Although it was probably the most challenging part for me, it gave me the chance to see how far I had come from day one. I wouldn’t have been able to complete my apprenticeship without the help of my team in HR as well as Magna as a whole. Everyone supported me and whenever I needed help they were always there.

Now I've completed my apprenticeship, I'm going to take a break from studying to concentrate on learning every aspect of my job but in the future I would like to do a CIPD course.

If I could give any advice to someone my age or younger it would be do what you want to do! I have a vivid memory of one of my high school teachers telling me I would fail if I decided to do an apprenticeship instead of going to university. With a level 2 & 3 apprenticeship under my belt, I can confidently say I haven’t failed nor am I ever going to.

For more information about our apprenticeships, visit:  Apprenticeships at Magna | Magna

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