1st Year Apprentice Award 2019 - Matthew Harris

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The winner of our 1st year apprentice award went to... Matthew Harris!!


We asked Matthew a few questions about his Apprenticeship and winning this award...

1) What is your Apprenticeship?

My apprenticeship is in Business Administration and my role at the university is Administrative Assistant in Personnel Services. I work, primarily, with the Adverts team and Reward Team as well as the HR Policy Team.
Because of the nature of my role I am often in contact with lots of departments across the university, from Chemistry to Clinical Neurosciences... Each department is frequently looking to hire new people to fill new roles and so it is my job to help make sure these roles are advertised on our website and with over 13,600 staff working for the university currently, you can appreciate that there's always plenty to do!
My daily responsibilities include emailing new job adverts to external job sites for them to advertise, managing the adverts team inbox, answering a wide variety of queries from HR staff across the university, grading new jobs or completing regradings on behalf of the reward team, Adding job adverts to our site using a web content management system and completing research on market pay to collate data on median pay for various job roles across the UK as well as a few other bits and bobs such as comparing financial information from other universities with Oxford University and helping the HR policy team with surveys and indexing old papers etc. I also order stationary for the office and manage the petty cash tin.

2) Can you describe some benefits of undertaking Apprenticeship based training?

 I was actually studying as an undergraduate in my 2nd year at another university myself when I decided it wasn't for me and I wanted to do something else instead and in my opinion the work experience and knowledge I have gained from my apprenticeship has been far more valuable than what I was doing before and will look really good on a CV too, not to mention I'm now getting paid instead of getting in debt!
I look forward to coming to work each day and I feel as though I'm valued by my colleagues and managers. I would highly recommend doing an apprenticeship to anyone considering it.

3) What was your reaction to winning your award?

I was so happy and a little surprised when my name was called out but I was absolutely delighted, although, it was a little nerve-racking being the first one called! I was very grateful that I had been chosen; I always try my absolute hardest at work and have always been enthusiastic about taking on new responsibilities and giving it 100% but I was also certain that my work ethic would have been shared with many other apprentices too and so I had no idea I would win.

4) What would you recommend to anyone else considering an Apprenticeship/taking on an apprentice?

Go for it! Sometimes it’s easy to feel pressured into heading off to university, especially if lots of your friends are going but doing an apprenticeship can be just as a valuable!

There are so many departments and thus a really wide range of apprenticeships on offer, from Junior Electrical Engineer to HR administrator. You will be given an actual role within your team - you won't just be an added on extra, also, working at Oxford University will look really good on your CV because it is such a worldwide renowned institution for education and research.

The training and experience you receive will definitely but you in good standing for a full time position and its worth mentioning that Oxford University pays their apprentices exceptionally well.

From a management perspective, getting an apprentice to fill a role instead of hiring someone who is not an apprentice would bring down costs for the department but may well yield the same level of productivity.


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Created by Sophie Bebb, previous University of Oxford Apprentice at the Said Business School.

Managed by Melissa Duffin, Apprenticeships Coordinator at the University of Oxford