Featured Apprentice Story

In his role as a software engineer, Liam is remarkable and outstanding apprentice, who has shown rapid growth both professionally and personally, which has enabled him to make fantastic impact to both our apprentice community and also our business as well.

From the start, he has shown consistent strong results in his studies, achieving 1st level grades across all the modules he has completed so far, as part of his Degree Apprenticeship. His can-do attitude and drive to deliver the best outcome in everything he does is outstanding. This is also true for his role, where within 8 months of joining went from little experience in testing to having worked across multiple complex, high visibility projects and was leading our testing effort alongside our test manager, during a time where more senior team members had left the team. This involved regular calls with one of our major public-sector clients, managing defects and representing the team in senior stakeholder calls. At this stage he was also onboarding and training two new members to the team, utilizing his knowledge to further up skill and improve our team's project knowledge and ability to deliver the maximum output, in the limited time we had.

All of his senior peers were impressed with Liam's attention to detail, soft skills and ability to quickly adapt, learn and take on challenges with confidence. He is very proactive, where he up skilled in a emerging test automation framework and achieved his ISTQB Testing certification within just a few months, bringing great benefit to the projects he worked on and his own personal growth. He quickly became an integral part of the team who is trusted to represent the team to the highest levels of both the client and wider Capgemini.

In July 2022, Liam moved into his Software Engineer role following internal structure changes and also his personal ambition to further develop his ability in the technical side of software development. He once again swiftly grew in this area, utilising his prior knowledge to have direct input into solutions very quickly leading to multiple internal recognitions for his work and his constant embodiment of Capgemini's values. A year on, he has now worked across 4 different projects working on data ETL pipelines and testing of complex solutions. More recently, he has led on a piece of improvement work for a public sector client with support from a senior software architect, where he immediately impressed his peers. He showed his ability to utilise his prior knowledge to quickly come up with multiple viable design choices and was able to confidently discuss the pros and cons of each both internally and with the client. He also further up skilled by obtaining his AWS Cloud Practitioner certification, enabling greater ability for working with multiple technologies from a key cloud service provider. This is incredible personal growth and the impact he has made within less than 2 years far exceeds what was expected.

In Mid-2023, he was approached with an opportunity to take on a test manager assignment for a high profile project for a key public sector client, to assist in delivering the final stages of testing and delivery for a multi-year project. To be given such an opportunity first and foremost reflects his success and proven ability in the area to deliver fantastic results for our clients. Liam happily took on the challenge with a can-do attitude and has continued to make significant impact both in the team and across the project. Within just three months into the assignment, he has once again impressed his peers, bringing significant improvement to working with the engineering team and also bringing greater control, working with many test managers and other client stakeholders' to ensure the team remained aligned with the wider programme of work. This has given the project manager and client the confidence that the team's activities are aligned with wider programme testing, and are impressed with his contributions in such a short space of time.

Having now led multiple iterations of SIT testing, developed a complex test strategy for a sub-piece of work for the project, led multiple multi-team calls and regularly represents the client and project to the highest levels, he has shown tremendous growth, delivering the best outcomes on everything he works on. He has obtained two promotions within less than 2 years and achieved an 'exceeding expectations' performance rating in 2022, reflecting his significant growth and impact. His interpersonal skills shine bright and he is a very caring person, regularly going out of his way to help his peers and future talent.

It doesn't stop there, with outside of his day role being equally as impressive, where he has both led and worked on multiple initiatives to benefit both Capgemini, charities and the community. Within the 1st year, he voluntarily worked with a small group of colleagues to consult and improve a food parcel referral form system for a local food bank charity, where both his soft and technical skills shone bright. He consulted and developed a proof of concept solution that could massively improve the efficiency and output of the food bank, at a time where requests were at an all time high, with 1000s of requests each month. Both the charity and internal stakeholders were impressed and the project continues to be worked on today. Capgemini are committed to social value giving individuals time to support social value initiatives that give back to the community.

Secondly, he became part of the 2022 team for the 'Million Makers' challenge, a yearly initiative ran by The Princes Trust which sees many companies entering teams to raise at least £10,000 each for the charity. This was another fantastic success which provided multiple opportunities for Liam to develop his leadership, business, negotiation and technical skills to raise funds for The Princes Trust. Liam secured a deal with our early and emerging talent team to gain donations from Christmas parties. He also revamped a digital solution to enable us to run an internal virtual auction which saw nearly £3k raised within 1 week. Even when as a team we encountered multiple challenges, he was resilient and never gave up. Liam's efforts stood out which led to him receiving an 'Outstanding Individual' award at the Million Makers awards 2022. His contributions to the team led to us raising significant amount of funds and was a fantastic success. It also led to him being invited to attend the National Princes Trust awards in London where celebrity ambassadors and companies come together to recognise individuals who benefit from the initiatives the Princes Trust offers, thanks to funds raised through initiatives like Million Makers.

Thirdly, from the start Liam has been a strong supporter of the early and emerging talent community, getting involved in various activities such as shows, inductions, networking events, photoshoots and panels where he recently showed his ability to be vulnerable and talk about his experience and progression at Capgemini since he has joined. His ability to adapt his responses to the needs of the audience and be future focused in supporting our community is incredible and don't know how he does it. These opportunities both enable Liam to further develop his public speaking and networking abilities whilst also enabling us showcase the positive impact apprenticeship opportunities have on individuals. Finally, less than a month ago, Liam took part in an internal tech challenge which saw teams develop solutions that will solve problems in our area whilst also showing innovation and utilizing emerging technologies. Liam led the technical side of the team that produced a proof of concept AI Assistant using emerging AI technologies that could significantly improve access to key materials and information that the community needs. All whilst providing a fantastic way for this community to upskill and learn crucial emerging technologies that will continue to become even more important as time goes on. Before this challenge Liam had never worked with AI directly and once again shows his commitment and his ability to swiftly learn and develop a solution.

This could both improve the experience for our apprentices and graduates but also save 1000s of hours in time spent answering frequently asked questions, enabling our early and emerging talent supporters to invest their time in enhancing the community even further. The solution won the Judges Award in the challenge and multiple stakeholders such as the Head of Early and Emerging Talent for Capgemini UK and head of our market unit are very interested in seeing how this can be taken further and become a tool for the community.

Outside of Capgemini, Liam is also a Director on a board for a local community arts and cultural project which enables him to further his leadership and strategic thinking skills which he regularly utilises within his role at Capgemini as well. At just 23, to be on a board is another achievement in itself and further reflects his skillset and commitment to giving back to the community whilst also proactively developing his own ability. This further exemplifies the positive impact apprenticeships can have on individuals, proving them the crucial skills that will enable them to have long-term impact both to our business and the community.

So overall, Liam's personal growth and ability is fantastic and he has had a great positive impact to the projects he has worked on and to the business, his peers and the wider community. To be achieving fantastic results across all his studies, his day role, and outside of his day role is impressive and shows how invaluable apprenticeships can be to an individuals professional and personal development. Liam completed a Level 3 and 4 apprenticeship with another company before joining Capgemini on our Digital Technology Solutions Degree apprenticeship, and is an invaluable ambassador for these opportunities.