October Apprentice of the Month - Kamal Alaya
We are happy to announce the winner of the LDN Apprentice of the Month is Level 4 Salesforce Apprentice, Kamal @ EPAM!
Nominated by LDN Skills Coach Hannah, Kamal's infectious positivity and innate curiosity have resulted in remarkable feedback from senior project team members who find working with him an absolute pleasure.
Check out Kamal's winning Apprentice of the Month nomination along with our other fantastic nominations below!
Kamal’s Skills Coach:
Since I started to work with Kamal he has shown himself to be a dedicated and diligent apprentice.
Kamal has produced a fantastic first project and has demonstrated motivation and an eye for detail but remains incredibly humble. He has put in so much effort and shown initiative to learn new concepts and make his second project just as amazing as the first. Even when things get busy and Kamal knows that he has a lot of deadlines to meet, he remains calm and positive - a great attitude to have.
Kamal is committed to achieving his apprenticeship and is a joy to work with!
Kamal’s Line Manager:
Energy: Kamal is always full of energy. He comes to work positively and is always eager to take on new challenges. He has recently been working in a role that is not in his core skillset (working in testing rather than business analysis) which some people might find demoralising or unsettling. However, he has gotten stuck in and had fantastic feedback from the lead tester.
They said, "I would like to work with Kamal on future projects since he is very eager to learn new things and is not afraid of challenging tasks”.
Enthusiasm: Kamal is incredibly enthusiastic about his work. He is always excited to learn new things and is always eager to contribute to the team. His enthusiasm is infectious, and it motivates everyone around him.
One of his senior project team members recently said he is "an absolute pleasure to work with. The level of cooperation has been outstanding, and he has consistently demonstrated a clear and transparent approach to all tasks." … "I would definitely choose to work with him again in the future without any hesitation."
Willingness To Learn: Kamal is always eager to learn new things. He is always asking questions and is always looking for opportunities to develop his skills and knowledge. My regular catch-up meetings with him are very conversational, compared to others on my team he is far more keen to ask me questions about my experience so he can learn. He has recently shown a keen interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has been using his spare time to learn what is becoming a very hot topic in our industry. He is also planning to do a presentation to share his knowledge with the others in the business analyst team, not only learning for himself but also benefiting many of his colleagues.
Ability To Take Feedback: Kamal is very open to feedback and is always willing to learn from guidance from his project team members. He is also very good at putting feedback into action and making improvements. For example, he was having challenges with getting the information he needed on a project.
I advised that he needed to be both polite but also a bit pushy to get what he needs and to make it easy for others to answer his questions by doing as much research as he can himself and only asking for what he really needed. Over the course of the project he became far more effective at working independently and getting his tasks done. This was a project where the whole team were under a lot of pressure and he helped ease that pressure with his approach.
Propensity To Take Action: Kamal is very proactive and is always looking for ways to improve things. He is very good at taking initiative and getting things done.
Feedback from a lead on his project was "Even though Kamal does not know that much of the past of the project, he talks to people and asks them questions to learn how to solve something, instead of waiting until the problem is fixed by somebody else (In my opinion very important trait).”
An example of an outstanding piece of work that has benefited the team: Given that Kamal is quite new to Salesforce as a technology when he was assigned to be a tester on a project, he showed great courage and willingness to not only focus on the functional part of the testing, but using the agile "shift left" approach, to start the testing process earlier in the software lifecycle.
For example, questioning the stories (Acceptance criteria vs Technical Design) and identifying bugs in the underlying technical structure of the functionality. This required him to learn Salesforce components and products in a very short period of time. This significantly increased the speed at which testing could happen and reduced the time to fix bugs as they were identified early.
Overall, Kamal is an outstanding employee and a valuable asset to our team. He is deserving of the "Apprentice of the Month" award because of his energy, enthusiasm, willingness to learn, ability to take feedback, and propensity to take action.
Our runner-up for this month is LDN Publishing Apprentice, Bryony! Bryony was nominated by LDN Skills Coach, Helen, with feedback provided by the team at DK.
Bryony’s Skills Coach:
Bryony has been a fantastic apprentice from day one! She started the programme with enthusiasm and curiosity and always volunteers to contribute to the full and has continued in that way ever since.
She thinks carefully about any new task is always open to feedback and is prepared to take it on board. Bryony has received fantastic feedback from her line manager who described her as always prepared to help and has been a crucial element in helping the transition of Phonic Books to become part of the much more complex DK Systems, making sure it all runs smoothly.
Bryony manages her time with an efficiency that belies the complexity of all the conflicting priorities she is facing. As an LDN class representative, she has made herself available to others and is always happy to share and discuss the work she is doing. The cohort would not be the same without her.
Bryony’s line manager:
Bryony has been an amazing help to the team. Her enthusiasm is fantastic. She is very quick to learn and takes instruction really well. She never complains about her workload despite being handed ad hoc tasks on an almost daily basis. Everyone trusts Bryony with a multitude of tasks: marketing, editorial, and admin as the work is always done to a high standard. She is very responsive to feedback and works off her own initiative. Her level of commitment to her apprenticeship and to work we are doing is fantastic. Bryony is a great team player.
Here’s what was said about the other fantastic nominees:
Charlie Dutfield @ Fusion:
Charlie is very punctual. His role involves working all over London and the South and he makes it his mission to be on time. When meeting customers face to face his demeanor is a credit to him and what our company is all about delivering the highest level of service and customer satisfaction. He has also been learning our procurement procedures and touched on sales and all the while is managing to stay on top of his studying commitments. What a great all-rounder!
Laurel Nisbet @ BMJ:
Laurel has been fantastic from day one. Since she started she has consistently demonstrated a remarkable level of energy and commitment in her role. When she first started, Laurel made a massive effort to get to know her colleagues, the company, and the way we all work together. It's a big team, a fast paced environment - the energy Laurel has shown and continues to show is very impressive and is a big part of why she has developed into a key member of the department.
Shamara Hammonds @ Adnams:
Shamara’s is a hard worker and will go away and use her own initiative to find work, rather than wait to be told ‘what to do next’. She never complains about doing any of her tasks and has taken part in activities that are outside of her duties and participated well (even though its not her direct field of work). Her work is always carried out to a very high standard, and she can be trusted with important and sensitive work as I know it will be carried out correctly and professionally. I’m so impressed with how Shamra has settled into the job, the business and the team.