From a part-time job to a full-time career

It was late June and I was just starting my first shift in a part time job at McDonald’s and about to start filling out my personal statements and UCAS forms for university as I waited for my AS level results.

Then I received a phone call from Lucy about going to Bootcamp for The Juice Academy.

I decided I would travel down to Manchester from Liverpool without actually realising how good an opportunity it was. The moment I arrived at Tangerine was the moment I realised it was a great place to be, surrounded by people like Lucy, who is running the apprenticeship, and Sandy, who owns Tangerine.

At Bootcamp we spoke to people like Martin and Anna who have later been teachers at the Academy. The skills and advice they pass on is something that will stick with me for a while because they are the type of people who have fantastic knowledge and experience themselves, who point you in the right direction, and who make lessons fun.

When I found out I got the job at Betfred I was very happy – I realised it was an amazing opportunity and a chance to have a fantastic career path with a well-established company.

I am very grateful to The Juice Academy for choosing me to be part of this experience. To be selected from so many applicants gave me a great sense of achievement and the people at the Academy keep reminding us how well we’re doing, which is always nice to know!

At Betfred I am also learning some fantastic skills – although I haven’t been to university and I jumped straight into this role, I’m learning from skilled professionals with years of experience behind them.

The team is varied, with all sorts of different people with different job titles all combining their hard work to make Betfred an even bigger company.

Although I’m doing a social media apprenticeship, it’s fantastic to learn different aspects of business while using the social media side of the job to express your creativity and interact with customers.

This makes my role different to any other job out there AND the traditional routes of university and higher education – I couldn’t be happier!