Earning a salary and getting practical work experience while you study is something that attracts lots of people to an apprenticeship. But is it difficult to strike a balance between working and studying in reality? Former CIMA apprentice, Alex Sanderson, explains how he worked at Experian and studied for his CIMA qualification at the same time.
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Video transcript
- Title: CIMA Apprenticeships Videos: How have you balanced your work and studies during the pandemic?
- Number of Speakers: 1
- Speaker Name: Alex Sanderson
- Speaker Designations: ACMA, CGMA
- Speaker Title: Group Equity and Reporting Manager, Experian
- Video Duration: 1 minute 7 seconds
[Background music: upbeat and welcoming electronic jingle. Purple welcome page divided into 4 unequally sized sections by white lines, with the question “How have you balanced your work and studies during the pandemic?" in a large pane top left, and the CIMA logo in a small pane bottom right]
[The welcome page disappears and is replaced with the speaker, a young man with brown hair standing facing the camera. He is wearing a pale blue shirt with its collar open and is wearing headphones. He is standing in front of an off-white background. The upbeat electronic music continues to play in the background. The speaker starts talking and the music reduces in volume]
“I balanced my work with my studies with being quite structured and quite strict with my time allocation so I would treat Monday to Friday is quite an intense time period of work, and then study in the evening and then kind of have my weekends a bit more downtime and time to relax.”
[As the speaker begins to talk a purple title panel appears showing his name, ‘Alex Sanderson’, his designations, ‘ACMA, CGMA’, his position ‘Group Equity and Reporting Manager’ and the company he works for, ‘Experian’.]
Particularly when exams are on obviously in the run up to exams, I would revise over the weekend for those exams, but I kind of tried to bring that differentiation between the workdays and the weekend. I feel like Experian were really supportive as well. They allowed us now to study leave in the run up to exams. There was never any pressure to stay late as an apprentice. Anything that we did do late we got that time back as well. So I feel like I worked for a company which were invested in the scheme invested in me qualifying and studying which which really helps in balancing the time between work and study.
[The upbeat electronic background music grows louder as the speakers voice fades into the background. A black end slide appears displaying the CIMA logo in the centre of the screen. Shown below it in smaller lettering is Copyright 2021 Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. All rights reserved.]
