You’re hired!

Teams of apprentices at the University of St Andrews took part in a television’s Apprentice-style challenge today (6 March) aimed at raising awareness of the success and benefits of running such schemes.

The group of 15 apprentices from across the University’s Estates and IT Services Departments – including heating engineering, desktop support and joinery – competed in teams of three to carry out a range of tasks around St Andrews, from tracking down the University’s famous maces, to scoring basketball hoops at the Sports Centre.

Other challenges included having to find a specific book in the University’s library, taking a group selfie on the Swilken Bridge wearing tartan, and making a 60-second film of their team.

In the afternoon, the participants attended the ‘Boardroom Event’ – as featured in the television programme – to face the judges and get the verdict on their efforts.

Points were awarded depending on how well the task was fulfilled as well as for ingenuity and creativity shown by the competitors.

The winning team were then awarded £150 of Amazon vouchers to share, donated by QA Apprenticeships which provides training for IT Services’ apprentices.

Pauline Brown, Service Operations Manager in IT Services, said: “The event aims to test their initiative, planning, team work, and communication and negotiation skills. Above all of that, it’s meant to be good fun and to acknowledge how important and successful our apprenticeship programmes in Estates and IT Services are.”

The event, which was coordinated by Pauline and Helen Mackie, Deputy Director of Estates, was scheduled to run in Scottish Apprenticeship Week (5-9 March 2018) – a Skills Development Scotland initiative.

Notes to news editors

Caption: Helen Mackie, Assistant Director of Estates, and Pauline Brown, Service Operations Manager in IT Services (in the Alan Sugar masks), with the challenge participants

Issued by the University of St Andrews Communications Office. Contact Fiona MacLeod on 01334 462108, 07714 140 559 or [email protected].