Ben Curtis-Haigh

"We all have a laugh but as soon as a call comes in you switch from having a laugh to straight away taking the call and all your focus is on that person and trying to fix the issue."


Name: Ben Curtis-Haigh

Role: IT 1st line support analyst

Location: Darlington

 

"We all have a laugh but as soon as a call comes in you switch from having a laugh to straight away taking the call and all your focus is on that person and trying to fix the issue."

Ben first joined Northgate on our IT apprenticeship scheme and, due to his excellent development, he is now a full time IT support analyst.  This interview was undertaken when he was still an apprentice..

Describe your role as an apprentice: When I’m working as an apprentice, it’s basically the same role as anyone else and I do the exact same job as people who have been here a few years. I usually map printers, drives, fix general issues with PCs, set-up laptops and mobile phones. In our team there’s around six people including our manager. We take the calls for the whole of the Northgate UK organisation. So across the country, anyone that’s got a problem will call us and will get to speak to us first.  This includes the Directors - and I’ve set up a laptop for one and then resolved an issue for another - and it makes you feel brilliant when you fix something for them and they’re really happy with it. 

What’s the working environment like? As an apprentice you get the odd remarks like ‘you look 12’ and stuff quite a lot really.  It’s just banter and we all have a laugh but as soon as a call comes in you switch from having a laugh to straight away taking the call and all your focus is on that person and trying to fix the issue.

What training & development have you received?  We get on the job training and I’m with a specific IT apprentice training scheme. I get a monthly training update and they set us tasks which goes to our level three apprenticeship qualification.  I’ve just gone forward to level four after this so that’s really how it works here, they’re equivalents to A levels so it’s really good.

How did you choose an apprenticeship? When I was at school, I never imagined myself going onto college, I just wasn’t a fan of it so I was looking at other things. Apprenticeships caught my eye and the job at Northgate popped up. I was on holiday at the time so they delayed my interview for a week or two and when I had the interview, I got the call on the night that I got it then from there it’s just been really good.