Taking on an Apprentice scheme

[Frimley111R]

Has anyone done this? We're considering it for a sales admin type role for our climbing frame business.

[davepoth]

Frimley111R said:

Has anyone done this? We're considering it for a sales admin type role for our climbing frame business.

Ask yourself the following question - Would they be apprenticing in sales admin (i.e. learning on the job under the supervision of an experience mentor and going to college for further education in the field), or just doing a junior sales admin role at a very cheap salary?

[Frimley111R]

OK, they are from a training company who do IT training and work placements. One could manage our SM, emailing, website blog, content management and do the sales (inbound booking and proposals) possibly.

[Digga]

We've got engineering apprentices, studying for NVQs. It works well, but you have to realise that they're very young and come with widely varying degrees of 'employability' and initiative. IMHO, even the best need to shadow and require supervision.

To be fair, they are not paid a great deal and throwing them in at the deep end is neither fair not good for their gaining knowledge. It works best when their hands-on experience can be tailored to mirror their coursework.

I think it is a very good scheme for apprentices and a very large number of employers.

[andyb28]

We do it, we are on our 3rd one, all of them have been kept on after the course ends.

It's a fantastic scheme as long as you are prepared to take your time with them. After all, they are cheap.

[surveyor]

Step-lad is on such a scheme in a similar role.

Works well from both sides in my opinion. They have been through a few and honed their skills. For instance bad time keeping is rewarded with 2 months of 11am -9pm shifts that murder social life, he soon learned the lesson.

The employers in my view take advantage a little. But hopefully it's a start to his career and you can't knock that.