Brandon joined Aptus in 2021 on an Accounting Apprenticeship through Bolton College. He completed AAT L2 in 2022 and began working towards AAT L3.
An Accounting Apprenticeship gives apprentices an excellent insight into how our organisation operates and the opportunity to make a real contribution within our finance team. Training requires apprentices to attend college one day a week to complete the AAT Level 2 qualification and undertake the rest of their apprenticeship learning on-the-job within our finance team, where 80% percent of the qualification is gained.
Apprentices are assessed throughout their learning programme with a mixture of formal tests, workplace observations, portfolio building and self-assessment. For full details on the course and entry requirements visit Bolton College.
In our Q&A Finance Apprentice Brandon tells us more about his apprenticeship journey.
I feel that I learn a lot more when I’m actually doing something rather than exams, I also think that the experience you get is a lot more valuable than the experience you would get in a classroom.
I found this apprenticeship though Bolton College and I wanted to work here as a lot of finance apprenticeships are in small accountants and I felt like I would learn a lot more at a bigger company, not just that but I could tell this would be a good place to work from the second I walked in from how friendly and welcoming everyone was.
What I have enjoyed the most about my apprenticeship is meeting new people and learning new things about finance.
I feel like being in an apprenticeship has made me a lot more used to the workplace and I think the best skill I’ve learned that doesn’t relate to finance is probably communication skills as when you first come into a work place it can be a bit nerve racking because there are so many people.
I want to work towards being a fully qualified accountant and then I want to go into property.
I can’t really answer this as I already knew what I wanted to do before I started the apprenticeship, however, being on being on apprenticeship and actually being in the workplace has made me even more certain that this is what I want to do.
I want to carry on learning how to use Excel even after the course. I want to complete my level 3 and 4 AAT so I can be a fully qualified accounting assistant, at which point I will look at doing the course to be a fully qualified accountant.
I would like to think I can put a smile on everyone’s face, but not just that I also help a lot with the invoicing and ordering.
I think this depends on the person; if you think that you learn well in the classroom than I would stay on A Levels or BTEC, but if you think you learn better when you are actually doing something I would go for an apprenticeship.
