We recently spoke with Peter Garrett, who has recently completed his training at Kaplan in the Level 3 Information Communications Technician apprenticeship.
From spending most of his career with the British Army to seeking a new career in the world of IT and technology, Peter Garrett shared his experience with us. Let’s take a look at how he found his training.
Can you tell us about your career so far?
I recently retired from full service in the British Army after 23 years and then joined Defra as my second career. So my career so far has really only consisted of the total 12 weeks it's been of the ICT apprenticeship being delivered by Kaplan, and that's pretty much as far as my career has got so far.
What made you go into this new field?
I started off as a fleet manager in the army, which would include managing loaded trucks with drivers, but I then moved into the HR side. I took on responsibilities of the iHub in the army, which is essentially a complex helpdesk. So, I would be a SharePoint administrator and build SharePoint sites from nothing to fully functioning sites. From this experience, I really loved tech and I’m interested in tech and IT, so I wanted to do it full-time.
I saw a Junior Cloud Engineer job role come up and I was looking to retire from the army, so I jumped into it as Cloud is an expanding area in the IT industry. And then the Level 3 ICT apprenticeship came from my new job role.
What do your daily tasks look like?
In this job, we are using Azure a lot. I’m basically going to become an Azure Administrator, so at the moment, I’ve been shadowing on-the-job tasks with external Atos engineers. As a business, Defra wants to grow their own team of experts so that knowledge, skills and expertise remain in the organisation whilst building on the skills and capability of internal talent.
Was there anything that you found challenging during your apprenticeship?
I found the Networking Essentials and Scripting Automation modules quite challenging. Some of the knowledge was quite new, or very new, to me. But a lot of other stuff I would easily pick up. However, the Networking and Scripting modules were much more in-depth and a bit challenging.
But, the tutors were excellent, they were amazing. They would stay on a call for as long as you needed at the end of the day to go over the content. They also offered to put on extra sessions, and there were days where we would be self-learning but they were always available so that we could contact them if we needed to. They’d also set up ad-hoc meetings for extra support if we wanted it, so they were really good to us.
Are there any soft skills that you’ve developed through the apprenticeship?
There are a few that I’ve revised or reactivated. After having such a long career in the army, I think I’ve developed quite a lot of soft skills but maybe I haven’t used them all the time, whereas now I require them more.
What are your plans for the future?
The immediate future is to finish the apprenticeship and complete my portfolio. I’m also doing a number of other Microsoft fundamentals and Associate exams, so I need to study for them. I’m using Microsoft Learn, and have self-paced learning days where I’ll prepare myself for the fundamentals and associate exams which will include 104, Administrator, Microsoft 900 and other applications like that.
I think the topics we covered on the apprenticeship are good building blocks. A lot of the modules certainly set you up well for a career in IT, like the cloud-based solutions and networking modules.
How would you summarise your apprenticeship?
On the whole, I would just summarise my experience by saying it's been very positive and thank you very much to my tutors. They've been amazing.
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