Our second wave of Degree Apprentices have come to the end of their first year, and had to make the difficult choice of where they want to head towards within the next 3 years. The two of them have split into two different pathways, IT Consultancy and Software Engineering. They both have their own reasoning for making the choice, and have discussed it below.
James
When it came to choosing which pathway I was going to take as I progress in my degree I didn’t have much trouble picking. This is mainly because I have known I wanted to be a software engineer since being about twelve years old. I did take into consideration the other options but non of them really stood out to me as something I’d be interested in so it was a no brainer.
Willow
Unlike James, my decision wasn’t as straight forward, and I ended up being split between three different choices, Software engineering, IT Consultancy and Data Analysis.
There were many steps I took to choose my pathway, going online and looking at the course specifications, as well as going to meetings with course leaders and discussing it with the helpful staff at the university.
The first choice I reviewed was Software engineering, which was the choice I thought I would go with before I actually looked into the others. One of the main reasons I liked this choice was because I know that I like to problem solve, which is a core part of programming, as well as liking the documentation that comes with it. As well, I do like to code, but I know I’m a step behind when it comes to the technical knowledge needed, which would end up being a core crippling aspect within this choice.
The second choice I reviewed was Data Analyst, and just like software engineering, there’s a lot of problem solving involved, though it would be more towards working with databases (SQL instead of JAVA). There’s also a lot of legal aspects that I would learn about, as I would need to know about how to legally store user data. Even so, just within work, the small parts of SQL I have worked with have shown me that even a small mistake can be deadly to the internal system. As well, after looking over the four years in each pathway, most of the aspects I like are covered within the final choice I reviewed, as well as the one I chose: IT Consultancy.
As I stated before, one big sign that this was the right choice over the others was that it contained a lot of the aspects I liked out the other course types, but more generalised instead of specific and in depth. It will also let me learn more about how to efficiently work with the customers, as well as making sure that they are satisfied with the system itself, which I am looking forward to.
Links to the used online resources:
Manchester Metropolitan Universities Course Structure
Data Analyst Job Profile
IT Consultancy Job Profile
Software Engineer Job Profile
Apprenticeship Standard