Here at Purple, we are passionate about fostering young talent and providing our apprentices with the stepping stones to develop and build their careers.This week, we are excited to be celebrating the 10th annual National Apprenticeship Week.
As a brief summary, NAW 2017 “brings together employers and apprentices from across England to celebrate the success of apprenticeships over the last decade and will seek to encourage even more people to choose apprenticeships as a fast-track to a great career.”
We are proud that Team Purple has seen tremendous personal and professional growth in our apprentices, and we are honored that young, aspiring adults have chosen us to help them on their professional journey. We feel that apprentices offer just as much to us as we do to them, and feel that the intrinsic value in these schemes are hugely beneficial to our company and our culture.
A living and breathing example of a great apprentice is our Marketing Executive, Abi Perkins. Abi started at Purple in 2014 and since then she’s made incredible progress. Here’s Abi’s piece on her personal experience as an apprentice at Purple:
I got my first look into the marketing industry when I did work experience in High School. I knew that was the career path I wanted to go down.
After studying Art, English and Media at college, it was just a matter of picking a course and a university. I have always been a ‘home bird’ and I didn’t really want to move away, so after finding an apprenticeship course in Marketing, everything just fell into place.
Purple was the first interview I got and obviously the one I picked, which was convenient as I was actually already an end user! At one of my part time jobs we used Purple as our guest WiFi service, so I was intrigued to see what happened behind the scenes. As soon as I got the offer I took it – and the rest, as they say, is history!
Over the last two years I have taken part in a variety of work, from email marketing and events to WordPress and design work. I have also had the chance to collaborate with some of the largest technology companies in the world. I have been involved with PR, social media and provided general support for all departments, which means I have had an insight into how the company works from all areas. I work closely with our HR Manager Cathy, which has been so helpful in seeing how marketing is applied to our brand as well as our product. There is a really great culture here at Purple and we do not shy away from a team lunch or a night out.
As well as Purple supporting my learning and allowing me to carry on with my qualifications, the in house support I have had has been amazing. I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to be able to work with such talented people. To say I have learnt a lot is an understatement, from Adobe Creative Cloud skills to digital marketing techniques!
As one of the youngest members of the company, I am excited about my career growing exponentially with Purple. It has been very interesting to see how far we have come and how fast we are growing. It really is such an exciting company with an incredible vision and I am really proud to be part of the Purple Journey.
Abi’s efforts have made a huge contribution to the business – she is integral to not only the Marketing Team, but to just about all departments within Purple. It has been incredibly rewarding for us to be part of her progress, and she has inspired us to take on three new candidates in 2017.
The first will be working with our Operations Manager, Jenny Wren. This candidate will gain first-hand experience with business administration within a tech company as they will be working closely with all teams within the business and our CEO, Gavin Wheeldon.
The other two apprentices will be joining as part of our partnership with Cisco, and will be joining our sales team(s) for an inside look into lead generation, account management, relationship building, and the full sales cycle. This experience will not only be beneficial to Purple, but extremely rewarding for the apprentices as well – as an emerging growth business with smaller-sized sales teams, apprentices will be able to make a measurable impact in sales and see where their work is making a difference.
We are incredibly excited to bring on more fresh talent in 2017, and are looking forward to seeing how the apprentices develop within Purple. Commenting on the program, our HR Manager (and apprenticeship advocate) Cathy Belford said, “We’re in a great position as a company to support an apprentice in their professional development, and as we take great care of new employees joining us, we are confident apprentices will feel welcomed and will easily integrate into Team Purple. We also look forward to the experience, as there is so much we can learn from an apprentice who is coming into a Company with new ideas and perspectives.”
Adding in on the value of these programs, our CEO Gavin Wheeldon also said, “As a business community, we have a responsibility to nurture the next generation of talent to help them reach their full potential. Finding the right talent can be a battle, but apprenticeships offer businesses the perfect way to secure future superstars.”
Wishing all the apprentices and companies participating a great National Apprenticeship Week!