Continuing our National Apprenticeship Week interview series, we hear from Charlie, a 20-year-old Business Administration Apprentice at CXK’s Youth Employability Service (YES). Join us as Charlie shares insights into his apprenticeship discovery, experiences, and the positive impact he is making through his role.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share how you discovered the apprenticeship opportunity with CXK, and what motivated you to pursue it?My name is Charlie, I am 20 and I’m a Business Administration Apprentice for CXK’s Youth Employability Service (YES). I discovered this apprenticeship opportunity whilst I was working as a labourer shortly after dropping out of university, through the government apprenticeship website. This specific opportunity caught my eye because I was aware of the YES programme and the good it does in my local community, as I know people who have struggled with their next steps and have been helped by YES. I’ve always been someone who isn’t shy of trying new things and compared to what I had previously done, an office role isn’t something I had experienced but I felt I might be quite good at because of my academic experiences, so I decided to give it a go and I am very glad I did.
As a Business Administrator I have quite a varied job role including many responsibilities. My main duties include: carrying out phone calls, texts or emails as part of the tracking team, data entries and supporting our advisors with whatever they need. I need to be flexible and adaptable because I could be asked to do vastly different things such as managing social media, producing the Jobs & Apprenticeships List, or handling post. Whilst doing all this I also have one day a week put aside where I focus on my apprenticeship workbooks.
I have only worked here for almost a month doing my apprenticeship but what has surprised me most is the work environment. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from the work environment coming in but I have been very pleased with the dynamic here. Everyone is very helpful and supportive, which is why they’re very good at their jobs. I also thought it could potentially be quite a monotonous, strict workplace but it’s the opposite, I work with a variety of good people every day and its quite a good balance of hard work and independence.
So far in my first month I have had to do a lot of training in various different things and that has been quite challenging at times, but now I feel fully confident in those parts of my job, such as safeguarding, health and safety and GDPR. I’ve also had to get up to speed on how to use all the different systems, phone conduct, social media and more, which I have managed successfully and confidently. By doing this training and learning in this short amount of time it has made me more confident about my position here, more competent in my role and supported my professional development.
I am still young so I’m not completely sure what my long term goals are but that’s part of the appeal of this apprenticeship. This apprenticeship allows me to gain a qualification and learn/progress some functional skills which are malleable to most professions in this sector/environment.
If someone I knew was considering a Business Administration apprenticeship I would encourage them to do it because I think it’s a very good career, with a lot in terms of prospects going forward. I would advise them to make sure they have decent knowledge of Microsoft systems (or learn) because Microsoft systems are key to this role and could be tricky to navigate if they were a complete novice. I would also advise them to learn keyboard shortcuts because they save me so much time when working!
