May Apprentice of the Month - Tajana Reeves
We are happy to announce that the winner of the LDN Apprentice of the Month is Tajana at Teach First!
Nominated by LDN Skills Coach, Geeta - Tajana has continuously shown real determination and enthusiasm since the very start of her Level 3 Business Administration apprenticeship!
We received fantastic feedback from Tajana’s line manager, as well as the other brilliant nominees, which you can read below!
Tajana’s Skills Coach:
Since the start of the course, Tajana has shown such dedication, she has strived to be the best she can be and to complete all of her apprenticeship targets on time.
Tajana is very open about her learning disabilities and is not afraid to make suggestions for better ways of learning and capturing her evidence. Tajana had completed a lot of audio recorded evidence with me, and when speaking about Teach First, relevant legislations, stakeholders, and her company mission, vision, and strategy, she has shown fantastic knowledge, which shows that she has really embedded herself into her organisation and made every effort to become involved in the wider mission of her organisation and to be performing at her best throughout the apprenticeship.
Tajana made a brilliant effort to attend our recent in-person event at Lansdowne. Tajana contributed to all of the activities on the day and showcased all of her knowledge and skills attained during her 3 months on the apprenticeship to her peers.
Tajana always comes to her coaching sessions, and support sessions prepared and thoroughly deserves this nomination.
Tajana’s Line Manager
Energy:
Tajana has settled in really quickly, and has formed really good relationships with her colleagues despite mainly working remotely. She brings a lovely positive energy to the team, and is great fun to work with. She has also brought loads of new and interesting ideas to the team, and we really value this new perspective. Tajana is always happy to help with tasks and has dealt really well with the busy periods in the work experience programme, taking it all in her stride and remaining positive and productive.
Enthusiasm:
Tajana has been really confident and keen to get stuck into all elements of the role and the organisation. Beyond excelling in her role, she has also joined the Neurodiversity and Disability awareness affinity group at Teach First. She has thrown herself into her role of being a buddy to a new starter, despite only having been here a few months herself, and has gone out of her way to make our new colleague feel welcome eg. by offering to travel to events with her and creating a top tips guide for being an apprentice at Teach First.
Willingness To Learn:
I’ve been really impressed by Tajana’s resilience when learning new things, especially when they don’t necessarily come easily to her, and by the thoughtful questions that she asks. This helps me as a manager to support her learning in a way that works for her. I’ve seen huge improvement in Tajana’s outputs since she has started with us and her confidence using our systems has grown so that she is now taking on larger tasks and completing them more independently. When discussing her apprenticeship, I am always impressed by how much she has learnt about Teach First and her reflections on this, showcasing her independent research skills.
Ability To Take Feedback:
Tajana takes feedback really well, and I consistently see her reflecting on this and implementing it into her work. For example, I have seen her incorporating feedback that has been given on previous emails into her future communications, making the latter emails far more effective. She is also happy to give feedback to me and other colleagues on things that could be improved, which we really value. A few weeks after joining us, Tajana was already suggesting ways that we could improve our work experience comms to schools and students to make them more effective, which I really appreciated.
Propensity To Take Action:
Tajana has been recognised by colleagues on multiple occasions for her willingness to speak up on topics and to take action when she thinks things could be improved. I really welcome her ideas and know I can rely on her to action any tasks that are set to her. Tajana has taken ownership of her own projects, and uses her calendar effectively to manage her time between the role and the apprenticeship. She has several goals that she is working towards and every week she is able to share actions that she has taken towards these goals.
Outstanding piece of work:
Tajana has been an amazing addition to the work experience programme during an extremely busy time. In March and April, she was responsible for co-ordinating all communications with our work experience students, preparing them for their Easter placements. She showed great confidence when calling the students and made sure that we had all of the information that we needed and that this was recorded clearly and accurately on our systems. She has been fantastic dealing with all student and teacher enquiries that come into our mailbox and has made sure that all schools interacting with the work experience programme are supported. As a result of Tajana’s brilliant support, all students agreed in the end-of-placement evaluations that the onboarding process with Teach First was smooth and that they had all of the information that they needed.
Our runner-up for this month is Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprentice and Class Rep, Amber Howard! Amber was nominated by her LDN Skills Coach, Howard, with feedback provided by her team at Sage Publishing.
Amber’s Skills Coach:
Amber is an absolute star. She is a real source of support for me and her fellow apprentices, answering queries during group sessions and helping to share LDN news more widely.
This month she organised a social event for the group in London and a fantastic Kahoot quiz during our Live Session which taught us all about recent marketing campaign successes and industry trends.
Amber approaches new tasks, new learning and new responsibilities with positivity and enthusiasm and has successfully taken on the management of her own Amazon marketing campaigns recently, which feels like a significant step forward in her career.
Amber is also involved in a number of cultural and social activities at work as part of the company's Culture Club, giving her time and energy to good causes and charity work.
Amber’s line manager:
From the very beginning of Amber joining us, I had people commenting to me on just how impressed they were with how she interacted within the team. I have been impressed with the way she has organised her time, asked for guidance when needed and negotiated her study and work.
I can always tell when she’s excited about a particular piece of work and enjoy her eagerness in coming up with ideas. This is testament to how much she has grown her knowledge and understanding, and demonstrates how invaluable she has become.
Here’s what was said about the other nominees:
Annabel Rainbird @ DK:
Annabel is a fantastic planner and organiser, which means she structures her time to get the best out of each day. She is a very positive person, which means she always has a ‘can do’ attitude. We love having Annabel as part of our team and enjoy watching her grow – not just technically but also within herself as each week you can see her confidence building.
Rohan Patel @ Bates Wells:
From the very first day Rohan has taken on every task he as been assigned with great enthusiasm. He has become an important part of the Team and in such a short time has earned the respect of his colleagues and his peers. As his manager I am often given compliments about the way he deals with people and problems and in a professional manner.
Batoul Yousef @ Nebula Consulting:
Batoul is a keen learner showing passion across all the work she does and has already taken up joining a specialised team within Nebula to learn more about a subject that interests her.
Arash Mahabadi @ 10Duke:
Our experience with Arash has been very positive from the start. He's both a hard worker and a easy-going personality, meaning he's a great fit to our team. It's been a very smooth transition from his initial onboarding to becoming a member of our marketing team.
Lian Wilson @ Bloomsbury:
Lian’s enthusiasm was clear from the very first interview and one of the things that really made her stand out. I also admire the way she maintains that enthusiasm across every task. It doesn’t matter whether she’s composing tweets for our Twitter channels, writing pitches for Indie bookshops or inputting masses of data in our CRM system, she approaches everything with that same positive attitude.
Ameenah Khan @ Pushkin Press:
Ameenah’s genuine enthusiasm for working in publishing has been a joy to see. She is interested in how everything works and fits together, which is paramount when working in production, and I know that interest will take her far! She has been particularly helpful in relation to our YA books, speaking with YA editors and reading outside of her role, purely for enjoyment.
Serhat Kara @ Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan:
Coming from very different working background, technology in general is new to Serhat. From learning mobile device remote management, to getting an understanding of computer network, Serhat has shown keen interest and willingness to enable himself to be more independent with helping out users.
Yumna Hussain @ Emperor:
One of Emperor's values is infectious enthusiasm and Yumna embodies this in many ways. Her enthusiasm for the responsible business agenda and specific sustainability business issues shines through in her informed, considered, and positive approach which means she is already a powerful advocate and influencer for what we are trying to achieve and the journey we're on.