Mya Hackett

Apprentice at Orbits IT & Finalist for the Apprentice of the year award.

We spoke to Mya Hackett, a finalist for The Apprentice Of The Year Award 2021, to see how she's feeling about the awards and to find out more about how she has been getting on in her apprenticeship.

"I am very grateful to have been nominated, I never expected it. I think it's amazing just to be nominated let alone being a finalist."

Orbits IT is an IT support company, we provide support for small SME's. We do everything from IT support, cloud services, IT services, cyber security. We have three offices, one in Halesowen Birmingham, one in south Wales and then one in the southwest. I chose to do an apprenticeship because I wanted to stay in education but didn't want to do it full time. I did want to get out there and earn but I wanted to do something I enjoyed at the same time.

Swift sent my CV out and set up interviews for me. They discussed with me about the places I felt comfortable going to so it wasn't just that they set up the interviews for me and that's it. I do a lot of the marketing for the company. I do Google Ads, Google Analytics, Website Optimization, Email Marketing and I really enjoy it all, I find it quite fun. I enjoyed all the sessions I attended, especially before my exams, they were really helpful. If I felt like I needed any extra support I knew I could go to my tutor Emil.

I think the main benefit of doing an apprenticeship is that you stay in education so you can learn whilst you work. I think an apprenticeship is the best way to go because you're getting a qualification, getting experience and earning all at the same time.

I've been offered another contract for 12 months to stay here which I'm really looking forward to and am really grateful for. I do want to stay with this company for as long as I can really, I've really enjoyed the apprenticeship, everyone has been great and I'm doing something I love to do.

I would recommend Swift to people because I think it's a really good company. My tutor Emil provided a lot of support and did a lot for me and the communication has just been really good.

Jim Lewington
Director at Orbits IT

We also spoke to Jim Lewington, Mya's employer to see what he has to say about Mya's journey throughout her apprenticeship. This is what he had to say.

"My experience with Swift has been excellent"

I'm delighted that Mya has been nominated for Apprentice of the year, it's nice to have somebody in our organisation recognised and there's no doubt Mya deserves it. She started her apprenticeship at a difficult time with the pandemic happening last year but also into an organisation where her role didn't exist previously. So she's come in and had to create a role for herself, a role that perhaps I was doing predominantly in the organisation but with no real structure. Mya has come in and really been the focal point for all our digital marketing which has allowed us to focus on that aspect of the company but also means it's taken away from me and I can now focus and has freed me up to do other parts of the business that I need to do.

The apprentices we get are keen to push themselves, listen, learn, develop and progress. They understand they are an apprentice so we don't expect them to know everything. They take instruction well and have to work alone at times but more importantly, they develop into the kind of staff we want as apposed to taking on staff who may have bad habits or practises that we don't like. So from our point of view, the apprenticeship scheme has worked really well and is the primary source of new employees at the moment.

We get new staff we get to train up in exactly the way we want and as long as they learn, they listen, they take instructions and they want to push themselves they will go far. I think if you need staff and you are happy to put the time and effort into training them how you need, the results will prove themselves.

Three of our apprentices have come from Swift and all have worked out really well. The whole process of working with Swift has been good, it's been a difficult time last year with the whole pandemic but the communication has been good. My experience with Swift has been excellent.