November Apprentice of the Month - Millie Acers
We are happy to announce that the winner of the LDN Apprentice of the Month is Millie @ Welbeck Publishing Group!
Millie is currently working towards her Level 3 Publishing Assistant qualification after successfully completing our eight-week Publishing Traineeship programme!
It's great to see Millie progress onto a publishing apprenticeship from our traineeship programme and thrive in her role as an Editorial Assistant within the Welbeck team.
We received some incredible feedback from Millie’s line manager Isabel Wilkinson, as well as five other brilliant nominees, which you can read below!
Millie’s Skills Coach:
Millie joined the apprenticeship via LDN’s publishing traineeship and very quickly established herself as a proactive and engaged member of the cohort.
She involves herself in the Live Sessions with enthusiasm, often asking questions or acting as spokesperson for group activities. In the most recent session, Millie delivered an informative presentation about BookTok that has inspired other apprentices to explore whether their organisations could make better use of this platform.
Millie does a good job of staying on top of her learner journal, and submitted her first project draft within 6 weeks of being on programme! On the job, Millie has received excellent feedback from her manager, particularly regarding her enthusiasm, and her ability to pick tasks up quickly and complete them to a high standard. Millie is level-headed, dedicated, and keen to learn, and I have every confidence that she will go far in her career.
Millie’s Line Manager
Energy:
Millie's energy has made her such a positive addition to the editorial team. When Millie had been with us for only a couple of weeks, she joined a brainstorm attended by dozens of colleagues from across the company and confidently posed her ideas and discussed the ideas of others – I was and continue to be very impressed by her positive energy, and the way she presents herself and works with others.
Enthusiasm:
Since the day Millie joined Welbeck, colleagues across the business have commented on her enthusiasm and how much she has brought to the team. Her enthusiasm is not only visible in the creative and editorial work she does, it also comes across in more everyday tasks, such as taking ownership of the metadata for the narrative and illustrated teams.
Millie has made a conscious effort to integrate with colleagues at Welbeck and she is very popular, connecting with senior staff as well as taking time to meet up with other junior colleagues and create a network that will support her through her apprenticeship.
Willingness To Learn:
Millie has proven herself over and over again to not only love learning but to pick up new skills and information incredibly quickly. Within a very short time of joining us, Millie was getting stuck into our ancient management information system and using it to create and disseminate AIs, input and retrieve data, and assist with the maintenance of the publishing schedule. This is no mean feat as many others have been beaten by our system...
Millie has also requested additional training in specific areas of the job so that she can gain expertise – showing that she is happy to work on areas she has less experience of as well as excelling in those she is already skilled at.
Ability To Take Feedback:
Knowing that Millie's creative writing is one of her key strengths, I have asked Millie to write AIs and back cover copy for several fashion titles. Having created drafts of these tests we then went back and forth editing them, and Millie was happy to take feedback on board about the style and target audience of the different pieces. Millie has shown that she can absorb feedback by going back and reworking these and getting them to word-perfect before sending them to design.
Propensity To Take Action:
Going above and beyond what is asked is certainly a part of an editor's day job, and Millie proved herself in the first month she was with us by staying late to assist with the creation of urgent metadata for our US team. Not having worked on metadata before, Millie embraced the challenge and worked on a fantastic spreadsheet collating all of the required information from across our systems, as well as doing her own research into comp titles and sales figures.
Example of an outstanding piece of work:
This is very difficult as Millie's work is consistently excellent, but recently for the Frankfurt Book Fair Millie was instrumental in creating a time-sensitive presentation for a new book idea. For this book on superstitions, Millie researched and wrote the text for the sample spreads, as well as writing the AI and doing background research on the unique selling points and comps.
Millie showed real passion and creativity when working on this project and as a result of the fantastic presentation she worked on with the team, this book will now be going ahead and Millie will be project managing it.
Our runner-up for this month is Level 4 Salesforce Consultant Apprentice Charlotte Townsend! Charlotte was nominated by LDN Skills Coach, James, with feedback provided by line manager, Jessica Hargreaves.
Charlotte’s Skills Coach:
Charlotte has been extremely committed to her apprenticeships and has been proactive in asking for further help in developing her first project for her portfolio. She has been running her company's blog and has been a good advocate for LDN apprenticeships.
Charlotte’s line manager:
Since joining the team in April 2021, Charlotte has remained excellently enthusiastic throughout. Charlotte’s enthusiasm never falls short for projects that she may be working on; regardless of whether she’s familiar with the activities required or not, Charlotte looks forward to completing the task with such enthusiasm to continue adding to her ever-growing skillset. As you may have already discovered, Charlotte shares her experiences through weekly Apprentice Hoot blogs, where her enthusiasm and positive energy always shines through.
Charlotte's infectiously positive energy also contributes to the incredible level of commitment to not only her work but also the team and company as a whole.
Here’s what was said about the other nominations:
Sophie Sarney @ Taylor & Francis:
Sophie is full of energy and is always ready to tackle the day, take on new challenges, and support colleagues across the business regardless of whether it’s a Monday or last thing on a Friday. Despite having to work remotely and connect with colleagues from across the globe in multiple different time zones, Sophie is always willing to go the extra mile to support and champion the work of the Learning and Organizational development team.
Iain Bhagwandin @ Wacoal:
Iain has been with us since June and during the intervening time, he has put in a lot of effort to get up to speed quickly with all the general support tasks we cover. Iain is always willing and eager to experience and learn new tasks and jobs that present themselves – whatever they are. When the workload increases Iain has what it takes to keep on top of things.
Jared O’Donnell @ Walk in Media:
From the day Jared started almost 6 months ago, his vibrant personality has brought endless amounts of energy to our team. Daily Jared keeps us all in high spirits with his brightness and sense of humor - which motivates us as a whole. Additionally, he has hit the ground running with his ability to quickly pick things up and put them into practice. He is absolutely smashing his job role and his energy is allowing him to be in a much better position than he should currently be in.
Amina Begum Saleh @ Caritas:
Amina is very enthusiastic and is happy to pick up any tasks we are able to assign her. She will also go above and beyond to deliver excellent customer service and pick up on business critical tasks to ensure they are completed on time. Our candidates consistently comment on how nice it is to speak with Amina and that is because she comes across as enthusiastic and that she cares.
Zoe Clark @ Michael O'Mara Books:
Zoe has boundless energy! She started her apprenticeship when we were working at home full time and was quick to always reply to emails straight away and do the admin side of the job speedily. Now we’re back in the office part time she’s shown equal energy in things as diverse as coming up with new title ideas and offering her opinions to problems to building office furniture and rearranging bookshelves. I know how much she loves being in the office and being part of a team and we’re all so happy to have her here.