Apprentice v Graduate – Who’s right for your business?

Editor’s note: The following post was written by SharePoint MVP Alan Richards  

 

Background

 

When I looked at writing this article I garnered some opinions from a lot of different people; educationalists, IT professionals and also the directors of my current company. The surprising bit about gathering all of this opinion was how similar it was, for me this was a bit of a shock, I really did think that all of these people from completely different career spectrums would have very differing opinions.
So what was that opinion; well in a nutshell it was that it depends. Now that might sound like a bit of a get out of jail reaction but it is very true, the choice of graduate or apprentice does depend on a lot of factors. Some of these I have listed here
· Maturity of the business
· Speed of new staff member being able to contribute to the business
· Skillset needed by the business
· Freeness of business staff to provide quality on the job training and guidance
This list is not an exhaustive one but shows some of the thought that has to go in to decision making behind whether the business takes on a graduate or an apprentice.

 

Education & Skillsets

 

While in essence the employment of either a graduate or apprentice will provide the business with the same thing; a new person in the business, the skillset and maturity of the new staff member can be quite different. An apprentice is normally a School leaver over the age of 16 while a graduate who has undertaken a 3 year course will be over the age of 22 once they have completed School, College and finally University. While the age difference is not and should not be a reason for a choice of employment, it’s that age difference that has allowed the graduate to gain more life experience but more importantly it has allowed them to gain experience of learning at a higher level while gaining a qualification. A lot of IT based degrees also now contain an element of professional qualifications, so as well as finishing University with a degree, a graduate could also leave with a Microsoft professional qualification. Click here to continue reading full article…