I have now completed six months of my apprenticeship at Rathbones and it is going just as well as it had been when I last posted! I have now spent four weeks on each team within the IT department and this included visiting the Bristol office to set up PCs for new users and just last week I went to the London office with my team leader to attend some meetings he had there. This was a good chance to meet the members of the IT department that are based in the London office, who are just as friendly and welcoming as those in Liverpool.
After completing four weeks on each team I had to choose one team to go on to for three months. My preferred team to work on for this length of time was the Network and Infrastructure team. This team ensures that the Rathbones computer and telephone network are always connected and secure. The tasks I have been carrying out so far are setting up new users telephone accounts for them, so that they are able to log in when they are sat at their desk, adding people to different pickup groups so that they can pick up other people’s phone calls, adding diverts to their phones and so on. I have also done some work on the firewall side of the network and hopefully I will be able to do more as the opportunities arise! Soon I will be taking on the job of doing the network checks. These are checks that have to be carried out each morning to ensure that there are no issues on the network, and if there are any issues that they are logged and rectified correctly. The guys on the team have been very helpful in explaining the tasks they carry out and they’ve been getting me involved as much as they can and it is a great team to be working on!
As well choosing this team to work on for three months I have also had to work on my NVQ portfolio, which is coming along nicely, I have been able to tick off much more since I have been on this team for a longer period of time and am on course to complete it for the summer. After that I should be starting to look at IT specific qualifications to study for in the second year of the apprenticeship which I am eager to get started on!
