When I received my placement, I came with the assumption that office work is a boring career, but the Oxfordshire Apprenticeships office has shown me that is not true. I have done a large range of different activities over the week, including social media work, graphics and sitting in on meetings and business decisions.

My work has been varied and constant: there has not been a dull moment. On my first day, Mel talked me through all the different aspects of the business’ twitter and useful websites like Thunderclap and Hootsuite to help organise tweets to go off on a schedule. I then started work on an article for the Oxfordshire Apprenticeships website on the Jargon Free Jobs campaign that is currently underway.

I researched the campaign on various different websites and talked to some people in the office about their experiences. Toby told me about what it was like finding a job with jargon saturating the description. I also talked to Rebecca who took part in one of the mystery shopper events. I gathered all the information together and published an article on the Oxfordshire Apprenticeships website.

On Tuesday, Jenny walked me through some of the websites that she uses to create presentations and infographics for OxLEP. I created my own infographic about annual salaries in the UK and made a Powtoon slideshow on my tips for work experience. That afternoon, I was on the judging panel for the 2017 Cherwell Business Awards Apprenticeship of the Year Award and helped determine the finalists and overall winner.

On Wednesday I was out with Oxfordshire Work Experience Advisor Mike who drove me around Oxford, visiting all the different businesses across the city who were offering work experience placements.

On Thursday I was in the office and started work on my Storify, gathering tweets and other notables from my week and creating a storyboard of my work experience so far. Around lunchtime, I visited the Natural History Museum with Sarah and Mel for a tour of the site. 

On Thursday afternoon I did some research into a careers event called Your Green Future, which is coming to Oxford soon. I looked up green Apprenticeships for the team to talk about there.

On Friday I spent the day at Marlborough School in Woodstock, helping to run workshops on Apprenticeships and how to find and apply for them for Year 12 students. The team told me that they spend a lot of time in schools talking to students about Apprenticeships in assemblies and workshops like today.

See my Storify story for more photos and links from my week.