NAW 2015: My Experience

So National Apprenticeship Week is drawing to a close for this year, and I realised what most of you don't know is that I am on an apprenticeship myself. There are honestly times I even forget it myself as I'm doing the exact same work as my more experiences colleagues and I'm treated exactly the same as every other employee in the company.

I am working towards a Level 3 City & Guilds in Social Media with the help of The Juice Academy and Total People. I found the application process my mistake. I was unemployed and looking for a local job and one company was hiring a social media apprentice in my town, so I applied. I was taken through the application process for the Juice Academy and I ended up receiving an email inviting me to a boot camp selection process a few weeks later.

I attended the boot camp with 30 other applicants, and we all looked terrified. We did a series of tasks and mini interviews with around 10 different employers who were looking to hire people like me. The employers mulled around all day, we tweeted, vined and sold ourselves to the employers who chose a number of people, not including me.

I was invited back the week later for an interview with just one employer. Three other applicants from the boot camp were also invited and we all had another mini interview with the new employer who had missed the boot camp. None of us got the job and we were all invited back to the next boot camp a few months later.

It was just as terrifying the second time round, but I knew what I was doing. A whole new batch of employers, the same tasks, but new people to interact with and share my ideas with, and this time I made myself known. It worked and the week after I was starting my new job at a digital marketing agency in Manchester which is where I am still working. I attend the Juice Academy for training and we learn about social media for businesses and get insights from industry leaders, digital media lawyers and the people creating new technology to make social media more accessible.

I have met friends that I hope I will never lose and skills that will build the foundations for the rest of my career in marketing and social media. My choice to not go to university was one I had started to regret after spending half a year on job seekers allowance, but it was completely worth it for the role I am currently in.

If you are aged 16-23, live in the North West of England and do not have a degree, why not see for yourself how life changing a job in social media can be? Apply for the next Juice Academy bootcamp in  April and meet employers like Tactus Citizen, The Intu Trafford Centre and Jump Nation. Apply here to become part of the social media revolution.

Picture Sources:

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https://twitter.com/TheJuiceAcademy

Be Happy Doing The Daily Grind

It's so important that you're happy in your job. Unhappiness in work leads to stress, mental health issues and let's face it, bad work. I've had a few friends recently question the job they are in, and if it is right for them, and I think there are a lot more people out there during this time of year who are starting to question why they do what they do. Here's the advice I gave to my friends:

1. Make Sure You're In The Right Job

This sounds like one of those things that's easier said than done, but if you really hate your job, start looking elsewhere. If your job doesn't use the skills you have, either naturally or learnt through school and previous work, you need to start looking for something else. There will be a company out there who is looking for your exact skill set, all you need to do is find each other.

Don't leave your current job without having something else planned out and waiting for you. I can't stress that enough, just hold on until you find something new. It's better to have a job you hate than no job at all.

2. Challenge Yourself

Are your deadlines so far away that you feel you can just sit and relax all day? Change your deadlines yourself to meet your own targets. Your manager will notice this and start setting more challenging and complicated work that you will receive more praise for as you will have demonstrated how hard you can actually work.

If you don't challenge yourself, your work will get easier and easier and it has been found that having too little work to do can cause just as much stress as having all of the work.

3. Stick It Out

If you're new to a role and you feel it just isn't working for you, keep trying at it. The longer you are with a company, the more they will trust you and value you as an employee, so your working life will improve. You'll learn, get to know the people you work with and really get to grips with the work you are doing. If it still isn't working out after a few months, then you can consider a change.

The right job is out there for everyone, it's just sometimes it's too difficult to find. If you can't find the right job, why not make your own? Freelancing, contracting and even becoming a business owner are becoming easier with grants, support networks and companies designed to help you along the way.

Try something new, it might just be the thing that makes you.

Picture Sources:

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Why Procrastination Can Be Useful

I'll be the first to admit, I can procrastinate for Britain. But it's never the major things. My apprenticeship work is completed as soon as I can, work at work gets done as it comes in, but when it comes to personal motivation and drive, there's nothing. I always think: I need to blog, but it can wait another five minutes. That's why my other blogs failed. But here's the thing: I've learnt. I learn things everyday at work, and I learn things at my training provider, but I also learn things about myself when I'm faced with a new task, and this time I learnt procrastination can be a brilliant thing.

Firstly, rushing work is never good, and a little hesitation can help. Procrastination could help you come up with ore ideas before starting a project or simply give you more energy to do it later on, as long as it does actually get done. It also gives you a bit more time to look over your work if you're procrastinating over sending work off or publishing a blog post, one more chance to notice a huge mistake or to add a new point. 

Procrastination also gives us time to think, which I suppose is very similar to my last point, however, it gives us time to think about the little things: why am I doing what I am doing? What makes me happy about what I am doing? Who else can help me? Where is this going to take me? When will this help me? How am I going to make this successful? If we don't take a moment to sit back and think about these things, we may as well be robots. If you realise something doesn't make you happy, or your task isn't going to benefit anyone,stop doing it! This could also work for people about to commit a crime, but lets not go there.

So when you're next putting off that task you know has to be done, whether that's cleaning the dishes (I'm looking at you students) or handing in that report for work; ask yourself the questions then get on with it, because a little bit of procrastination is okay, a lot is not.