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It is pretty inspiring listening to Ryan Yates talk about his job and what it means to him. He has just completed a two-year apprenticeship with Capita, working in a support team for BAE Systems’ IT department.

Ryan got the job after gaining a BTEC Diploma in IT at Furness College. The course includes learning how to plan and develop databases and websites, understanding functions and forms of software and hardware, and knowing the uses of IT systems and their relevance in a business. He started his career in IT answering phones on the service desk. And right from the start he had found himself in the thick or it. He explains: “People rung us up with IT problems and we had to fix 60 per cent of the calls the first time, finish the call within four minutes and the call had to be answered in 12 seconds.” But he is not complaining about the eight months spent in this area, because he loved the work and became technical support specialist after it was decided he needed something even more challenging.

One of the advantages of the apprenticeship, Ryan found, was that he got to work in different areas. After a period of time he had progressed so well, the company was happy for him to bypass level two of his training and go straight to level three. This is good work after leaving school at 16, completing one year at Sixth Form College before going behind the bar at one of the local pubs. But finding out at 19 that he was to become a father spurred him on to head to Furness College and start his IT course. This proved a move that would change his life.

He says: “I have always been interested in IT and I have always been good at it. I had done some IT training at sixth form, but now I was ready to take on something more technical and in-depth, and the course at Furness College really appealed to me. Even if I didn’t get an apprenticeship, I wanted to get higher education.”

While he was on the course, Ryan’s liaison officer at the college told students Capita was coming to interview students for an apprenticeship with them. Ryan must have impressed the company, because it only had one position and there were about 15 students competing for the job. The college talked to all the applicants to explain what would happen and gave them advice before going into their meetings with the company. Ryan says: “Two weeks after the interview I was invited to BAE by Capita and they went through what I would be expected to do and then they offered me the job. Even then I was really surprised, because there were so many people going for it and they were very knowledgeable. The course at the college was definitely one of the reasons I got the job. I went for an apprenticeship after that because I knew employers like people with hands-on experience. I thought if I could work for a company like Capita, get my foot in the door and work hard, it might lead to a job at the end. Being in the workplace you learn so much. You are talking to the customers and getting used to your work environment.”

Ryan really appreciated working with highly-experienced people because of the intense technical knowledge needed for the job. He says: “It is an important job and it would have been just a dream if I hadn’t got the apprenticeship. I didn’t think IT would lead to this, working with such extremely technical equipment. The college tutors really put me in the right direction and then the experience gained from the apprenticeship means I have learnt far more than going to university.”