Featured Apprentice Story

Christian took his first step into the world of business at the young age of 14! At this stage in his early career, he started his own business in buying and selling high-end footwear. During this period, he discovered a passion for the digital side of the footwear empire, mostly gaining enjoyment from creating social media content and setting up marketing campaigns. After recognising this desire to create graphic design, he built further on this.

As the pandemic crushed all our lifestyles in early 2020, Christian began spending his time further developing his digital skills by teaching himself how to build, maintain and analyse websites for start-up businesses. This experience and knowledge acted as the perfect foundation for his current position at Sage.

Christian is a Web Operations Apprentice, studying a Level 4 APM Project Management course. His role requires him to help improve the ways of working for Sage.com teams. This involves looking closely at process, documentation, governance, and engagement. He is constantly discovering ways in which he can apply his learning into daily working life. Since completing his APM exam, Christian has taken lead on two projects on behalf of his team. This will help himself and his colleagues adapt a more structured, methodical, and productive way of working.

We recruited for this role whilst Covid-19 measures were still in place, therefore the interview took place online. Christian excelled during the interview. He was confident, knowledgeable, and demonstrated a solid understanding of the Sage culture, and how he would fit in.

Christian was forced to begin his life at Sage from home until offices re-opened due to lockdown, which must have been a challenge for his first role in a business environment. However, once we returned to offices and events, Christian has been a huge support in representing Sage and apprentices at multiple careers fairs, encouraging others to take the same route he has. Alongside of this support, he has also presented a ‘day-in-the-life’ of an apprentice to multiple groups of applicants on interview calls.

As we all know, businesses constantly change, and a major change Christian witnessed was an added responsibility of managing the £1.1 million budget for the ‘Web’ department. This involved raising purchase requests, receipting against invoices, and managing monthly budget shifts. He is now confidently and successfully managing this area of the business. Christian’s line manager has stated that he is “impressed” with his strength in innovation. He is constantly suggesting new ways in which his team can work, whether that is tracking work differently or introducing a new tool. One form of innovation to highlight is his introduction of PowerApps to his team. Christian is now creating apps to support his peer teams by creating areas to host reports and other forms of governance.

It's not just his department which benefits from his innovative skills as he is currently in the process of assisting the Talent Acquisition team with digital business cards to support at events and he is also wanting to create a ‘hub’ for apprentices to gather relevant information.

Christian is also a great ambassador for Sage helping attract new apprentices to the business attending careers fairs and events to share his journey from joining sage to now. His passion for the business shines and he naturally engages with everyone.

Additionally, it is important to mention his identification of the need for a more ‘human’ approach to mental health awareness at Sage. The value of being more ‘human’ is important to Sage and their new brand and to assist this Christian would like to introduce lanyards/ pin badges to easily identify our very own ‘healthy mind coaches’ within office locations. Christian is keen to expand his portfolio of knowledge further so that he can become more advanced within his role as he is striving for success here at Sage!