Award-winning scheme promises a bright future for Apprentices

Apprentices at Oldbury-based cold-roll forming specialist, Metsec can look forward to one of the best starts to their professional careers when they succeed in winning a place on the company’s award-winning training scheme.

The in-house training programme has seen Metsec achieve the accolade of Apprentice Employer of the Year, strengthening company’s reputation as one of the top employers for young people in the Midlands.

Metsec Environmental Safety & Training Manager, Steve Giles comments, “Metsec remains one of the few engineering companies to run an in-house apprenticeship scheme without any external support.

“We have spent a lot of time getting the apprenticeship process right and making sure that we cast our net far and wide to find the right people for the future of our business.

“We hope that the word will spread and more young people will consider starting a career in engineering. To date we have trained more than forty apprentices who now make up 13% of our workforce. Furthermore, we are expecting to achieve our goal of having 20% of our workforce home-grown by 2020. It is great to see that our apprentices strongly value the opportunity to learn while they earn, both financially and educationally.”

The cold-roll formed steel manufacturer is currently recruiting new apprentices for its in-house scheme, who will complete their ‘Performing Engineering Operations’ Certificate at NVQ Level 2 together with a Level 2 Technical Certificate as well as develop their functional skills in Maths, Communication and ICT over the course of a year. On successful completion of the first year, apprentices will move onto an Advanced Apprenticeship to obtain an NVQ Level 3 and an additional Level 3 Technical Certificate.

Steve Giles continues, “The selection process is open to everyone and is not based on educational ability, but on the applicant’s attitude and approach. We like our candidates to have a positive, ‘can-do’ mindset and be able to demonstrate that they will become a valued member of our workforce in the future.”

Young people seeking a career in a successful engineering company can obtain details of Metsec’s apprenticeship scheme for 2019 by visiting the apprenticeship page.