Ambassador Declan - Transcript

I'm Declan, I'm a finance apprentice, and I work at Network Rail.

So I'm currently on my fifth year as an apprentice, so coming up to the end of my scheme. And, yeah, it's been a good little run so far.

So I found out about my apprenticeship when I was in the middle of an exam. So I was just finishing my A levels, and I'd just come out of one of my A-level exams, and I literally just had a phone call come through saying, "Hi, you got your offer accepted for Network Rail." And I was like, "Oh, solid. Happy days."

So over the four or five years, the way that the structure of my placements have been is doing six-month rotational placements across the business. There's a lot of different skills, soft skills mainly, that you definitely develop, like just the teamwork and even just your general skills that you pick up day-to-day.

But alongside even hard skills in terms of the technical experience that you get from different teams working with different systems, it's very rewarding.

I think looking back on before I joined my apprenticeship, I was anxious about quite a lot of things. I think the main thing for an accountant and then finance is using an Excel spreadsheet. And looking back on it now, I'd be like, it doesn't really matter. You're there to learn, and that's the whole entire point of an apprenticeship. You're not going to be expected to know everything. You'll look back on it and be able to develop all of those Excel skills. You'll be able to have people along the way that can support you.

But I think the number one tip for applying for apprenticeships is literally just to be yourself. Aside from that, the other tips I would say is making sure that you're looking at your job description, matching it off with your CV, thinking are there any examples that you've done? And I think a lot of people, they take the chance to belittle themselves and think, "You know what? I've only worked at, what do you call it, a part-time job. There's not really too much correlation between what that job description is saying." But it's just taking those little things and being able to talk about it and say, "This is why you'll be a good candidate."

I'm very proud of what I've achieved so far, and there's definitely a lot, even more stuff coming along the way, even towards the end of my apprenticeship and even after, that I can't wait to explore.