Member Article

Apprentices nurtured by Orchard

Talented North East students have been handpicked to work as trainees for a leading IT solutions company, after successfully completing apprenticeships with the firm. 18-year-old Scott Stanley from Wallsend and 20-year-old Samantha Martin from Gosforth had just completed their BTEC National Award for IT practitioners when they were introduced to the apprenticeship scheme at Orchard Information Systems.

Geoff O’Neil, Head of Computing and IT at Newcastle College, where Samantha studied before she joined the scheme, said: “The scheme has been an excellent opportunity for our pupils to progress with their career as this gives them a ‘real life’ working experience in the IT sector. “Schemes such as this have enabled our students to strive towards gaining their qualifications in turn giving them a good insight into new software programmes and day to day activities which are a regular occurrence within a specialised IT company.”

The trainees have a two year contract with Orchard, and are currently working in customer services positions where they are providing both technical and software support to customers in relation to Orchard’s range of housing management products.

Alison Davis, Operations Director at Orchard, said: “Young people are the employees of tomorrow and it is important that as well as academic learning they also experience ‘real’ working environments, which these apprenticeship schemes provide. “We hope to continue this scheme in the future and are always on the look out for future IT talent.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .