Apprentice Programmes

A Day in the Life of a telent Apprentice

We thought it would help if we asked some of our current apprentices to tell you what it is like to work for telent and to be on our apprentice scheme.

Overview of a Final Year Apprentice Field Engineer- Abbey Stafford

A typical day for me can start anywhere between half past 6 and a quarter to 8 depending on the location of the job. I usually get my job instructions the day before from my delivery manager (DM), unless I am working on a job which takes longer than a day. I will travel to my site of work, which is usually at a BT exchange, where I meet up with my mentor, but it can also be other customer sites. With the job I will get a blue folder, which contains all of the job details. I use these to locate the job within the building and work out what it entails.

I work alongside my mentor to carry out the job and am constantly learning new skills from him. Jobs can involve using different skills: cabling; terminating; commissioning and problem solving just to name a few. Some days I will just work on the one job on one site, but other days I could be assigned more than one job at different sites. We finish the day and write all progress made with the job in a site diary, which eventually goes back to my DM.

I find my job very interesting and rewarding mainly because I am never doing exactly the same thing everyday and I have many opportunities to gain new skills and meet new people.

Overview of a First Year Apprentice – Michelle Brewer

As an apprentice I have work based training and three week intervals at college. My work based training is centred in the South East mainly London and Kent. At the most I know a week in advance where I am going to be working but normally it is the day before. The working day starts at eight so when travelling into London I often have to wake up rather early. When at work the amount of engineers I work with can vary, sometimes it's just me and my mentor and at other times, groups of five or more. The work consists of lots of cable and fibre runs, installations and commissioning in telephone exchanges.

When I work in Kent I drive to my mentors and she then drives us to the exchanges, this makes it a lot easier for me as some exchanges are very hard to find and get to.

My College based training is at a college in Warwick with the other apprentices in my year, we stay at a horticultural College for the three weeks with our accommodation arranged. College days start later than the workday but can finish later too. You have the option to stay at the college over the weekend or go home, some coursework has to be done at home especially revision. The college is a good way for all the apprentices to bond with each other and help with any problems they may have.

I enjoy my apprenticeship because of all the different people I get to meet, the work is interesting and varied and everyone is always willing to help each other out.

Overview of a First Year Apprentice By Rajpal Jandu

My days start off by driving to meet my mentor Mr. AC Patel (a very experienced, hardworking engineer) and we both start heading towards the area that we are working in for that day. As telent Field Engineers we do not work at the same place everyday: hence, we travel around to different areas all the time and meet different people all of the time. This is one of the main reasons that I first applied to be a telent engineer!

Once we reach the area where we work, many different things can happen. Sometimes, we have to travel to more than one site a day, fixing technical faults and sometimes we spend a whole week at the same site installing and commissioning a whole system. What makes the job so exciting is the fact that I am never working in the same place all of the time.

Travelling and working on-the-go is the best part of my days at work. The change of atmosphere, people and different job tasks ensures that none of my days are ever the same.

At the present time I am working on a contract for Sky through a company called Easynet. I learn many new skills each and every day while working on these systems. I have only been an apprentice since September 2006 and have already worked in many places, met many new people and gained many new skills (working skills as well as interpersonal skills).