Even complicated instructions and theories become easier to understand when you break them down into manageable chunks and gain a working understanding of them.

In the same way you couldn’t complete a jigsaw puzzle without first seeing the picture, or fly a plane by simply reading a manual, understanding the end result and practical experience are key.

While a degree used to be seen as the holy grail of education, students leave university with debts running into the tens of thousands and many spend decades paying off their tuition fees when they embark on the career of their choice.

And with fierce competition both for university places and jobs, the overall package might stop people following their dreams in a particular field. Gone are the days when some saw it as an extended ‘gap year’ while they worked out what they wanted to do.

For those who do not embark on the university route, the alternative is not a working lifetime spent doing the same thing because you don’t have qualifications to progress.

This week is National Apprenticeship Week which highlights success stories across the country.

This year’s theme is “Build the Future” and the aim is to encourage everyone to consider how apprenticeships help individuals to build the skills and knowledge required for a rewarding career.

Apprenticeships were traditionally associated with trades such as plumbers and electricians, but now include careers such as law and accountancy.

The National Apprenticeship Week website shows opportunities with employers such as Amazon, PWC, IBM, BT, the NHS, Pfizer and Bentley. Many graduates would love to be getting the attention of businesses such as these.

One through the door, apprentices learn the necessary skills to do the job and experience real life in a working environment. They gain an understanding of responsibility and the pressures of juggling work and life, interacting with colleagues and customers. There consequences of arriving late and hungover to a lecture on a Monday morning and very different to what would happen in a workplace. 

While not technically an apprenticeship, those becoming trainee reporters on a newspaper learn in the best way possible – on the job.

No lecture or textbook can teach or prepare you to knock on the door of a grieving family for a tribute piece, or how to handle a serious accident or fire when you are at the scene with emergency services rushing around, distraught and injured victims, and possibly hostile bystanders. 

You learn quickly in those situations, and you learn not to make the same mistakes again.

What you experience while training varies from different papers and even from day to day. 

But when recruiting trainee reporters, my heart would go out to a strong candidate who had completed a three-year degree course in media, only to be told that they didn’t have shorthand, media law or other skills vital for the job. I had been there myself.

For those that did, the process was a two-year training placement where they cut their teeth on the job. 

Again, the classroom can only prepare you for so much.

In the Boxing Day floods of 2015, my brief to reporters was to treat it as a bereavement and approach families with care and respect and to go quietly if turned away. While there were fortunately no fatalities, many families had literally lost everything and we were possibly the last people they wanted to see. The "reporting an incident" chapter of the journalism handbook would only get them so far.

Whatever your profession, and whatever your views of it, there are people queueing up to get into it. 

This is why I would encourage anyone who is given the opportunity to consider taking on an apprentice. It means that the new intake can learn the job from the bottom up and will be far better off for it.

And having someone who is enthusiastic and has a desire to learn can be a huge asset to your business.

#apprentice #training #experience