An apprentice from Rochester is calling on local people and his fellow colleagues to pursue the career they have always wanted by applying now for one of over 1,000 new full-time Amazon apprenticeships available.
Recruitment has started for 25 different apprenticeship schemes ranging from engineering to broadcast production, creative digital design to health, safety and environment technician. 100 degree-level apprenticeships are available in automation engineering, project management, software development and chartered management.
Over 500 new apprenticeships will be offered to Amazon’s existing workforce, providing opportunities to retrain and gain new skills leading to an exciting new career path. Apprenticeships exclusively for Amazon employees range from a team leader through to a coaching practitioner.
The roles pay a minimum of £10.80 p/h in Rochester up to £30,000 a year for degree-level apprenticeships.
In addition to being fully-funded, apprentices also receive a comprehensive benefits package, including private medical insurance, life assurance, income protection, subsidised meals and an employee discount – which combined are worth more than £700 annually – as well as a company pension plan.
The new apprentices will join current apprentices already working at Amazon Rochester. The current Amazon apprenticeship schemes have attracted recruits from a range of different backgrounds from a former barista, footballer and photographer, to former military veterans and nurses. Throughout the last year, people have also joined Amazon from construction, customer services, health care, hospitality and sales industries.
One such apprentice, Brandon Mafu from Surrey, is a Mechatronics Maintenanceapprentice working at Amazon in Rochester.
Before finding the Amazon apprenticeship programme, Brandon was interested in pursuing a career in software engineering. He changed his mind when he found the Amazon Mechatronics Maintenance apprenticeship as he believed it would give him a good basis to learn about a range of subjects within engineering, before settling into one subject. Prior to joining Amazon, Brandon played football professionally.
Brandon said: “For anyone who’s ambitious and wants to be successful, the leadership principles you are shown at Amazon are exceptional. The apprenticeship has encouraged me to challenge my thinking and push myself to learn. I am excited to carry what I learn on the Amazon apprenticeship into the rest of my career.”
Andro Victoria, Site Leader at Amazon Rochester, said: “An Amazon apprenticeship offers an exciting career path, creating opportunities within our local community in Rochester and helping our own employees retrain and gain new skills at a time when investing in people and jobs has never been more important.”
The 1,000 apprenticeships add to Amazon’s continued commitment to creating jobs and opportunities to learn new skills across the UK. Amazon created 10,000 new permanent jobs in the UK in 2020 alone, and employs more than 40,000 people in some of the most advanced workplaces of their kind in the world with competitive pay, processes and systems to ensure the wellbeing and safety of all employees.
Apprentice programmes last between 14 months and four years and a typical apprenticeship combines theoretical learning with hands-on training, enabling participants to obtain qualifications and degrees and earn money in the process.
Once qualified, apprentices will have the potential to work across Amazon’s UK sites including fulfilment centres, delivery stations, sortation centres and the company’s UK head offices in London and Manchester and the three development centres in Edinburgh, Cambridge and London.
Amazon also offers employees Career Choice, an innovative programme which pre-pays 95% of tuition for courses in high-demand fields, up to £8,000 over four years, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon.
Amazon provides opportunities to improve existing skills or learn new ones through internal career progression opportunities such as cross-training, transferring to a different department and promotion into a managerial role. Applications are now open for Amazon’s apprenticeship programme. For more information, visit: www.amazonapprenticeships.co.uk