Paula is an Administrative Assistant at Thursday Cottage and with digital marketing being part of her role she wanted a qualification that would give her more in-depth knowledge.
Find out why, as a learner in her fifties, Paula believes everyone should be learning – and why she chose Tchaikovsky as the piece of music to represent her learner journey so far!
I’m an Administration Assistant at Thursday Cottage and I deal with sales, invoices, as well as our social media posts and website updates – I’m a bit of an all-rounder!
I worked in a department store as a buyer’s assistant for 13 years in the furniture, beds and linens department and when they streamlined they went central with the buyer team so I took redundancy and then got a new job at Thursday Cottage.
I decided to do the Digital Marketing Apprenticeship as when I took over my role the girl who was doing it before was in her early twenties and had been looking after the website and social media and they asked me if I could do it also. Aside from my own personal Facebook account I didn’t really know much about it. I’m good on a computer but I needed more in-depth knowledge.
The Apprenticeship is what was offered by my employer and they thought it was the best qualification for me to do as it’s work-based.
I know absolutely nothing about Apprenticeships before starting. My perception has changed since starting the course. They can help anyone with anything they want to do at any time of their life – I am in my fifties and want to continue learning!
It has been interesting learning things like sales flow, how people perceive social media, a person’s journey through seeing something online, looking at a review – and how this can be monitored and inform what we do..
It’s all a little bit challenging, it wouldn’t be learning if you weren’t challenged! Every time I look at a unit I think ‘oh my goodness!’, but once you start researching and getting into it, you realise this isn’t as bad as you first thought!
I am using things like hubspot and Canva which I had never used before to create my posts and I am also monitoring digital activity and providing insights.
My confidence has grown, that’s one of the most rewarding things.
I have grown in my skills and I have become more fluent in my workflow, of how I compose, write things down and create things.
It’s also keeping my brain active – especially having to do my English and maths all over again as I can’t find my certificates from my O Levels!
Veronique has been brilliant, anytime I want to talk to her she’s been there, even the evenings and weekends and she’s very helpful and very supportive.
My employers are also supportive and give me time during the week to do my coursework so there’s no problem there.
I would definitely recommend the Apprenticeship, to me personally everyone can learn something new and they should always try to. Expand your horizons!
Enlightening, informative and interesting.
Supportive, caring, fun and inspirational!
It would be a beaver, because when they start out they don’t know what they’re doing, then they plan, nibble into things, build solid foundations and a wall and have a big lake of information with ideas behind it.
Tchaikovsy’s 1812 Overture. If you listen to it, at the beginning it sounds a bit like you don’t know what you’re doing, then the drums are flashes of inspiration and it builds up to a crescendo! Canons are going off, the ideas are there – and then everything comes together!
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