Case Study: FutureJobs Apprenticeship Ambassador

Kim is a former IT apprentice and was completing her advanced management apprenticeship with LCF Law in Bradford when she became a FutureJobs Apprenticeship Ambassador with our colleagues and project partners at Ahead Partnership.

Kim was permanently excluded in Year 10 and feels very passionately about sharing her story with young people about their attitudes to school as well as apprenticeships. Kim missed an entire academic year and found she had to work extremely hard to catch up with her peers and sit her GCSEs.

She believes keenly in sharing the experience of being able to earn as you work and learn through an apprenticeship, as well as being able to influence young people’s decisions when it comes to attitudes to learning and focus on future careers.

Kim found the ambassador training session really useful, not only in building confidence in how to speak to young people about apprenticeships, but also for her day job as an Education & Training Manager. She says: “The training day helped me think about how I present myself, first impressions and how to capture an audience – as I’m a trainer myself I found this really useful in the context of my day job as well as when it comes to talking to young people about apprenticeships.”

Since the training, Kim has signed up as a mentor at Grange Technology College in Bradford as part of Ahead Partnership’s Make the Grade programme where she has been speaking to students about her experience of completing an apprenticeship and her career journey to become a manager at a national law firm.

She says: “The Apprenticeship Ambassador scheme has given me more confidence to speak to young people about my experience. I usually train solicitors, so learning how to communicate with young people has really helped me. I was even able to host a group of students at my own workplace for one of the mentoring sessions as well as being able to share my story.”

Kim will be taking part in more careers events, including one large-scale careers event for aspire2work learners – sharing her knowledge and experience of being an apprentice and how she turned her life around through her hard work and dedication.

The FutureJobs Apprenticeship Ambassador Scheme is running from March 2017 to June 2018 and is part-funded by the European Social Fund as part of the FutureJobs programme.

The Apprenticeship Ambassador Scheme is designed to help current or recently qualified apprentices gain confidence and communication skills to be able to share their stories with young people across the Leeds City Region. By taking part in communication training and then giving them the opportunity to get involved in careers activities to speak to students about their apprenticeship experience, the ambassadors can talk one-on-one with students about the realities and benefits of being an apprentice.