Software firm offers apprenticeship opportunity through Ladder for Shropshire campaign

Shrewsbury-based Shoothill is looking for a young person interested in software coding to join its team as a degree apprentice. Anyone who is interested can email careers@shoothill.com.

Shoothill has been delivering software solutions since 2006 and many of its projects have made headlines including FloodAlerts – the UK’s first live flood risk map which was used by the Environment Agency and the BBC.

The company has also made the news with other projects too, most recently, PPE Exchange – a free to use web portal designed to allow buyers and sellers of PPE to find each other and help to supply vital products to those that need it during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rod Plummer, managing director at Shoothill, said the company has always believed in training young people and developing them into qualified and professional employees. As of October this year the company has three young employees working towards their degree apprenticeships.

Mr Plummer said: “Right now, we have a whole generation of young people leaving school and going on to university to attain a degree. In many cases, they can finish their course with up to £50,000 worth of student loan debt. Not only that, but in the more technical qualifications and especially in software, in our experience, someone leaving college with a degree in computer programming had been trained in rather outdated web-application frameworks, and so we are forced to ‘retrain’ them anyway.

"So an alternative option is the degree apprenticeship whereby, instead of someone going to university, they start work at 18 with a firm like ours and work towards their degree while their qualify as a skilled apprentice, with all fees are paid by the employer.

“It’s truly a win-win option for both parties. For the employer, we get to train the young person to be skilled in the areas we need them to be skilled in, while for the apprentice, they get five years of paid, on-the-job training, with a fully qualified degree, and of course, no student debt at the end of it. This means that by the time they are of college leaving age they already have had five years’ experience with a degree, and so I believe they are at a real advantage compared to someone just leaving university with no experience at all.”

The list of degree apprenticeships that companies can put young people through is large and is growing all the time.

For example, Shoothill has recently taken on a new digital marketing apprentice at Shoothill and they are learning about all aspects of marketing, including writing for the press.