The Employer's View
Name		Kate Woods
Age		19
Current Position		Replenishment Assistant; GNC/Health & Diet Centres
Course		Advanced Business GNVQ, Computing A level and General Studies A level
Kate’s experience is different from that of most of our case studies; she chose to develop both business and IT skills by combining the Business GNVQ with an A level in Computing.
Why GNVQ?
"There were quite a few options open to me as I have 10 GCSE’s including 8 A’s and one A*. I had planned to do straight A levels and originally wanted to teach but work experience in a school changed all that. I hated it! My family are all in computing and I had experienced excellent IT teaching at school." "I decided on the Advanced GNVQ because it looks at real businesses and gives you the chance to practise what you learn. Advanced GNVQ is like a double A level broken down into manageable chunks of assessed work. I decided to do Computing at A level because I already knew a lot about the user side and wanted to concentrate more on theory and programming."
The course
"At school I had felt that you bounced around from one subject to another. GNVQ is structured so that there is logical progression between the units and you can see how different aspects inter-relate. They taught us how to plan our time which was really helpful. The business course included applying for funding and setting up an enterprise." "It was the first time I had had to work in big groups in which one person’s performance affected everyone else’s grades. With GNVQ it is very much a question of ‘what you put in is what you get out’. We also had to do presentations to people outside college which was very daunting at first, but very rewarding when they applauded at the end." "The work placement taught me a lot about working as part of a team; for example, it often doesn’t matter who does a particular piece of work so long as it gets done. We all realised the importance of compromising personal goals in order to achieve the business goals. It was good to be in a real working context where your time management ability really mattered."
Getting the job
"I achieved a distinction in the GNVQ and grades A in Computing and B in General Studies so I could have gone to university or done a Gap year. But higher education had never been a goal and I wanted to see how the real world worked. It came down to money in the end though a lot of people were surprised at my decision." "I had worked on and off for the company in one of the stores since I was at school and had a more regular commitment during college. I’d grown up with the company because my sister works there and it was an area that interested me. I deal with supplies and ordering using a monitoring programme written for us by IBM." "I didn’t originally apply for the job I am doing now – at the time I didn’t even know there was a vacancy at Head Office. I started off in July doing a different job and was given a promotion in November. I really enjoy the variety and I like working to deadlines – you have to deal with the pressure and constantly juggle priorities."
The future
"I am pleased to have got a promotion so quickly and am not looking at doing any more study at the moment. In any case, the Heads of Department here are pretty great at training people up and we also have a formal training programme."