Apprenticeships are continuing to rise in popularity, with businesses finding it increasingly difficult to source talent in the UK, apprenticeships are becoming a cost effective, cost efficient way to tailor employees to each individual organisation’s needs.
We are therefore very excited to have taken on a new Digital Marketing Apprentice, John (second left in the picture above), who will be promoting the work we and Games London do, whilst also showing how apprentices can work for the games sector. John’s going to be blogging about his experiences throughout his apprenticeship with us and Games London.
Here’s his thoughts on his first month:
Joining any new team can be daunting, especially when said team is hosting the ten-day London Games Festival that attracts over 50,000 people each year. The phrase ‘Getting thrown in the deep end’ was repeated several times over the week. In hindsight though, it was the best possible way to start and get an insight into the industry and culture behind games.
With the mentality of striving in the deep end, I was offered a week-long bootcamp in HTML, CSS and Javascript. On learning that I had to sit an exam at the end, the same person whose confidence would have previously wavered, stood no more. I understood how transferable the knowledge learnt would be at Ukie and Games London, so I took in as much information as I could and now hope to gain the certification on Friday.
One of the things that attracted me to becoming an apprentice is that they earn while they learn and work in environments they might not be exposed to without going to university.
Having an interest in promotional campaigns, the Digital Marketing apprenticeship standard was the perfect fit for me. My day to day job will be promoting the work that we do across all of our digital channels; expect regular blogs, videos and interviews.
But over the next 18 months or so I will spend twenty percent of my time training and eighty percent of the time putting what I’ve learned into practice. Tailoring coursework to compliment tasks at work, allows me to get the most out of my time and gives my manager the ability to highlight what they think is essential I learn for the company.
There are more and more people choosing the apprentice path. 491,300 apprentices joined companies in the UK in 2016, with 520 job role standards available for employers to choose from when recruiting an apprentice and over one million candidates applying each year. Small businesses get 90% of the training fees covered meaning that there hasn’t been a better time for the games sector to take advantage of the scheme.
On completing their training 76% of organisations offer a full-time role to their apprentices and a further 96% stated their apprentice added value to their operation.
Seeing as I have recently joined the Ukie and Games London teams as a Digital Marketing apprentice, the figures bode well for me. I hope to help and promote the innovation and creativity happening in the UK Games industry and convey it as the art and culture it is. Each month I will upload blogs on the progress of my apprenticeship at Ukie and I look forward to meeting as many Ukie members and other people from the industry as possible.