Ready to Learn with a Degree Apprenticeship
"I have built up a lot of management experience, but feel I hit a ceiling without a university degree, in terms of being able to progress into more senior roles. My degree apprenticeship is helping me overcome that."
"When I left college, university just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t focus properly on education at that time in my life. But work-wise I was always really engaged and keen to gain experience..."
"..and that must have come across, because once I had finished college I was offered a full time role at 18 as Concession Manager for a retail company. This was a big step up from being a part-time shop assistant during college, and I embraced that opportunity fully.
I continued to build work experience and explore throughout my twenties. This consisted of spending two years in France working for a tourism company where I was responsible for a team. I also worked for a betting shop as Deputy Manager back in the UK for a few years, before joining a local football club and charity as their Community Officer supporting fundraising efforts. This led me to my next role as Fundraising Manager with a small charity, before landing a role with Action for Children. They have been really supportive of my development and growth since joining, and I even got promoted to Regional Manager as a result of stepping up and taking on more responsibility during Covid."
Whilst Sam has many years of work experience in a business and management setting, he recognised the need to build further knowledge, skills and theory to allow him to grow in his role and progress further with Action for Children. This led Sam to exploring a degree apprenticeship.
"I was looking for opportunities to grow my business and management skillset, but I wasn't keen to go to university full-time. When I came across the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship with Corndel College London on our internal portal, I thought this is the perfect fit and applied. I was contacted shortly after and approved for the programme as a 'talent to nurture' for Action for Children.
Since starting the programme just under five months ago, I have seen immediate impact in my role. I now enter into conversations with our senior leadership much more confident, and I make more considered decisions anchored in theory that have shown great results."
"I am 100% ready for learning now. I really enjoy it and am ready to build my career. Combining learning with doing through the degree apprenticeship model works really well for me."
Sam's journey is a good example of how degree apprenticeships build academic knowledge and skills that can be directly applied to the workplace with immediate impact. The degree programme has already helped Sam feel more confident in communication with senior leaders. He now also underpins his decisions with theory for a more strategic and considered approach.
"The degree programme has exceeded my expectations. I have developed theory, knowledge and skills highly relevant to my role and put it into immediate practice in a short space of time."
"Instead of basing decisions on instinct, I now take a 'heart and mind' approach combining my instinct with theory and data ..."
As Sam has his eyes firmly on the next steps of his career, he recognises that the skills and knowledge he is developing from his degree apprenticeship are essential to progress to the next level. "I think I would have had a huge imposter syndrome without the skills and knowledge I am now building."
Having almost completed the two first modules on the programme, Sam is particularly excited about the second module which covers business intelligence and data. "I was initially dreading the second module, because I have never been good with data. However, the way the module is presented is really engaging. I have described it as 'a good book I can't put down' to friends and colleagues."
Whilst he wasn't initially particularly excited about the business intelligence module, Sam immediately saw the huge benefits of it and has already started using the knowledge to encourage more data-driven decision-making within his team.
