Apprentice Civil/Structural Engineer, Property at Southampton City Council

The following is a Apprentice Review for Southampton City Council.

Southampton City Council scores 3.8/5 based on 28 reviews.

All reviews are based exclusively on results of feedback from employees from Southampton City Council. Employees are asked to rate Southampton City Council on a wide range of work place topics, which is broken down through star ratings on the right hand side.

To find out how your Apprentices can leave reviews of your company, please contact our Brand Manager Grant on 01825 725291.

What are the Best and Worst things about your job?

Best

My team is very friendly and happy to help me with different tasks I am trying to do. The very limited times I have been in to the office it has seemed really lovely and a nice work atmosphere. Even though teams do not typically mix, I have been able to talk to people in the other teams in the department and have all been friendly and nice to have a chat with. Being a woman in STEM, quite often there is a huge gender gap in the organisation, but outside of my immediate team, most of the department seems to be really well mixed.

Worst

Having to work from home and self motivate is very difficult for me, although it has gotten easier now I have made myself keep to a routine. Working from the council and using government money means that a lot of red tape has to be gone through to get anything done/get new equipment, so a lot of projects take a long time to even get started.

What is the annual salary for this role?

Starting salary: £17,000 - £19,000

Current salary: £17,000 - £19,000

What advice would you give to someone applying to this role?

Be enthusiastic about the job you are applying for! Make yourself stand out in an application by including any exciting experience you have had. Make sure you convey some of your personality, as a lot of employers would prefer someone who will work well in their existing team, rather than someone with the most experience who doesn't work well with others.

Do you have any interview tips?

Think about working in the best interest of the people that the projects you would be working on would effect. Make your values clear, I had a few questions about what I would do if I was asked to lie about something to my superiors, or what I would do/who I would talk to about certain challenging situations. Write down a question or two to ask at the end of the interview, this usually leaves the interviewers with a final impression of you, so ask about the area you are interested in - so if you're interested in location, ask how easy the commute is for the interviewers. A good indicator of how well an employer looks after their employees is to ask how the people who work there think that they were looked after within the corona epidemic, what kind of IT help they were given to set up their own home office, how much wellbeing/mental health awareness was given to people.