By apprentice Lauren Brenton
I completed my Business Professional apprenticeship at Burges Salmon at the end of April this year, and I am now a Marketing & Events Assistant at the firm.
During my apprenticeship, I worked in four key areas of the business; our People team, Marketing team, Project Management team, and during the transition to remote working, I did a five-month stint on our IT Service Desk as a triage team member. All of my seats offered me valuable experiences that helped to push me out of my comfort zone and challenge me.
In our People team, I worked mainly with our Resourcing team, assisting with vacation schemes and candidate interviews, attending open days and travelling across the UK to help with our presentation evenings. I also had the chance to work with our Learning & Development team, attending and organising a Senior Associate Development Centre, and our Resourcing Business Partners too, conducting market research and helping with their interview processes as well. It was a great way to start my apprenticeship as everyone was keen to get me involved in tasks and their work, and they were really open to talking about their role, background and past experience.
During the last month of my seat with the People team, COVID-19 unfortunately hit and we started to transition to remote way of working. I was asked to join the IT Service Desk to support them as a member of their triage team. My role was to answer calls coming in from people across the firm and (hopefully!) help to solve their IT issues. It was incredibly daunting at first, having extremely little IT knowledge, but the support I received from the team was great and I still keep in touch with a couple of them now. I wouldn’t call myself an IT whizz, but I learnt something new every day and it was a great opportunity to build my confidence.
As part of our Business Administration Level 3 course, we had to complete a project to present on, and my project was to deploy Microsoft Edge to the firm as our new default browser, which worked really well as I was still with the IT Team. It was an amazing opportunity to have been given that level of responsibility as an apprentice, and the level of support I received from the project team was great and helped us to deliver a successful project.
Over the different departments as part of our studying, I also built up a portfolio of work, highlighting where I demonstrated different skills and knowledge. The studying aspect of the apprenticeship ensured that we continued to build upon our knowledge whilst we were learning on the job, by teaching us basics on finance and project management, alongside other business fundamentals too. We had continued support from our college provider, as well as our line managers, right up until our end point assessments near the end of our apprenticeship.
Then came my Marketing seat, where I worked with our mainly on events as part of our Events & Campaigns team, which would eventually become my permanent team! It was an exciting time to be with the team, as I helped to continue to deliver our online events programme, worked on key conference sponsorships like Highways UK and organised client hospitality during the Christmas period. There were opportunities to work with our Business Development team too, and to have a go at writing pieces for our newsletters. It was a great insight into the department I work in now, and having that previous experience of the department has massively helped me in my current role, as you become familiar with how the departments works, who is responsible for what and also the department’s objectives and strategies.
My final seat was with our Transformations and Projects team, working with our project managers. I worked mainly on IT projects (so knowing people from IT from my triage role was a huge help!), getting involved with a firm-wide deployment of the Windows 1909 software and my main project was a firm-wide project to deploy new communication software. I learnt so much in my time with the project management team, and it was a great opportunity to learn transferrable skills such as how to structure a project, delegate effectively, communicate with key stakeholders and how to take efficient minutes and note actions.
I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities that Burges Salmon gave me over the course of my apprenticeship, and have continued to provide for me in my role now. My apprenticeship has helped to increase my confidence, teach me more about myself and how work best, what my skills are and things I can do to improve, both work-wise and for my own personal development too. I would encourage everyone to apply for an apprenticeship at this firm. It is such a welcoming and friendly place to work and, as an apprentice, you are definitely a valued member of each team you visit.