Foot on the Ladder

How does one of the largest employers (besides the NHS) approach early careers? This episode, I speak to Nicola Drury, the Apprenticeships Lead for Amazon in the UK.We discuss rewarding apprentices, how they create new standards and courses at Amazon, Nicola's career history and what apprenticeship she secretly would do..Website: footontheladderpodcast.comInstagram: @ontheladderpodHarvey Church's Links: links.hchurch.net

Elijah Olanipekun is a Digital Technologies apprentice at Salesforce, based in London. He works towards the end of the sales process integrating the demands of the client into a final solution.In this episode Elijah shares his experience of founding the Black Apprentice Network with two others and the reason he is advocating for getting more Black Apprentices into the wider apprenticeship eco-system.Website: footontheladderpodcast.comInstagram: @ontheladderpodHarvey Church's Links: links.hchurch.net

What exactly does a UI/UX Designer do? This episode explores the role of Diparati Sen, a UI/UX designer at a fintech startup. We explore what that means, how you find pain points and smooth out processes!Another major part of Diparati's story is moving half-way across the world from India to retrain from being a software engineer at Cisco, to retraining in Bath, England doing an MSc in Computer-Human Interaction. Website: footontheladderpodcast.comInstagram: @ontheladderpodHarvey Church's Links: links.hchurch.net

Lucy Carder is a recruiter at Tech Firm Cognizant, but in a past life a HR professional and recruitment team member at TFL!We talk how you find what you want to do (she didn't when she first left school), what TFL looked out for during recruitment, how she's now recruiting in a different area (non-graduate/apprentice) at Cognizant and some of the best learning experiences from her own time as an Apprentice.Website: footontheladderpodcast.comInstagram: @ontheladderpodHarvey Church's Links: links.hchurch.net

Apprenticeships are not new, but the modern apprenticeship in the UK has only existed since 2015 and comparisons are often made that the experience is not the same as going to Uni. The Association of Apprentices (AoA) is striking to change that by connecting Apprentices up and down the UK!Emily Austin is the CEO of the AoA and in this episode we talk about the goal of the association, some of the upcoming changes. In a former life, she was also worked at Lloyds TSB during the financial crisis and had to deal with the onslaught of two large companies colliding. We also talk about her work with the St Martin's Group, a think-tank in the careers space.Website: footontheladderpodcast.comInstagram: @ontheladderpodHarvey Church's Links: links.hchurch.net

As part of the ongoing BBC Apprentice Series, Vishal Karri, a Software Engineering Apprentice spills the beans!He talks to me about his portfolio, working with the open University and how he only just scrapped through the interview with the wrong coding language!Website: footontheladderpodcast.comInstagram: @ontheladderpodHarvey Church's Links: links.hchurch.net