Rebranded ANS Apprentice Academy launches during Apprentice Week
Manchester based ANS Group has rebranded its apprenticeship programme and has set its sights on 2015 being its biggest year yet for apprentice intake.
The rebrand has been launched as part of this year’s National Apprenticeship Week which runs from 9 – 13 March.
The cloud and managed service provider began its own Apprentice Academy in 2013 initially taking on six apprentices and the academy, now in its third year, has been growing year on year and is aiming for an intake of 30 new recruits this year.
The ANS Academy was originally named the Cloud Academy but has been rebranded as the ANS Academy to better reflect the apprenticeship. This apprenticeship will take into account all the necessary requirements for developing skills and accreditations in world-renowned vendor support and careers building at ANS, which go beyond the cloud.
The Academy aims to fast track young apprentices’ into the IT environment of Managed Services. This specialist area then opens up opportunities to work in unlimited areas of IT support and management.
One of the first apprentices to join the programme was Jordan Bridge. He joined the programme straight from college two years ago and has worked his way up to become Team Leader, at ANS managing his own team and mentoring the next generation of apprentices.
The 23 year old from Warrington said, “After three years at college studying ICT I couldn’t find a way to get my foot into the door of an ICT job. The apprenticeship taught me all of the areas of the job that are needed for the role and more.
“After hard work and dedication I have progressed to a team leader role where I manage my own team on a daily basis. I also teach and up-skill apprentices to help them take a path like mine and progress to where they want to be. I can’t thank ANS enough for the exposure they have offered me and the team that I have worked with to push me to where I am today!”
More apprentices than ever are making it into our top professions – with research showing that a fifth of all advanced apprentices progress to Higher Education and that gaining a higher-level apprenticeship can boost your lifetime earnings by £150,000.
Paul Sweeney, CEO of ANS Group said, “Whilst the option of going to further and higher education is available, the curriculum is often too broad by definition. Often, at the end of a three-year course, items and areas studied have been superseded by new technologies or IT concepts, the very nature of IT. The UK has aspirations to be a world digital leader and the North will play a huge part in that. Our Apprentice Academy is nurturing young talent and helping develop the next generation of digital leaders.”
Beyond on-the-job training, apprentices will also have the opportunity to pursue vendor certifications and ANS Academy graduates are guaranteed employment at ANS provided they have successfully fulfilled the requirements of the 12-month scheme.
