The @BluescreenIT Ltd IT team here are getting excited about being finalists for the Apprenticeship Development award at 2019 West Morning News Business Awards #WMNBusinessAwards on 21st Nov, The award recognises South West businesses that are making a major contribution to the apprenticeship programme by using apprentices or encouraging their use elsewhere.
Our entry focused on our bespoke apprenticeship inclusivity programme we run to support and develop our Community Security Operations Centre here in Plymouth. The apprenticeship recruits chosen were proactively selected to include individuals from hard to reach backgrounds. A dynamic mix of candidates that included taking on and rehabilitating of ex-hackers, supporting and working with neuro diverse apprentices, the resettlement of an MoD personnel transitioning into civilian life and upskilling of individuals who have moved industry to wonderful individuals who simply didn't know what they wanted to do, but wanted to give it a go. The aim was to help us see what undiscovered talents were out there in the market and provide our company with a broader skills base to help us tackle the widening gap in cyber skills. We also believed that those coming to train with us, will naturally be involved in their local community through social groups as well as being part of the service we provide to enable us to provide both business as well family and friends advice to protect themselves against Cyber Crime. Our aim was to adopt a different approach that apposed normal recruitment channels of taken on straight from college or university where most recruits in Cyber are often selected from. Our programmes not only focused on recruiting from diverse backgrounds often overlooked, we also didn't want our apprenticeships to take the easier route of just taking the standard certifications that come with the apprenticeship programme. Our company invested in embedding leading industry certs in the programme to not only push our apprenticeship learning in their role, but would provide them with the industry knowledge to excel their career within or beyond our company to includes highly regarded certifications from internationally recognised vendors CompTIA's A+, Network+, Security+ and CySA+. Many of the apprentices have either progressed into more senior roles in our company or have successfully moved into alternative Cyber Security specialist roles within other companies in the South West and beyond.
As a company we are proud supporters of CompTIA's #CertifiedApprentice campaign and an active member of the Digital SkillsPartnership to improve the digital skills in the region. If you would like to know more, please give the team a call on 01752 724000