Apprentice of the Month - February 2023

Our Apprentice of the Month Award is an opportunity for the spotlight to shine on one of our current apprentices who has worked hard, accomplished, applied themselves or has achieved something fantastic whilst on programme. This is an opportunity to celebrate apprenticeships and their value, not only for the learner but also for the employer and the business they work within.In order to be awarded Apprentice of the Month, learners can be nominated by their TDM coach, other TDM members of staff who have come into contact with the apprentice and also from their mentor, employer or colleagues they work along side.

Apprentice of the Month – February

Our Apprentice of the Month Award for February goes to Hazel Thomas, Digital Marketing Level 3 Apprentice from The DM Lab.Hazel's nomination came from her employer, Chris Tipping, who wanted to express just how much impact Hazel is having in her role, how well she has settled in and how much she is learning.

"Since joining us in October 2022, Hazel has settled in really well. She is being coached in-house by Harvey - our first apprentice through TDM currently undertaking a higher education degree course we’re both funding and supporting. Harvey is passing on his technical knowledge and Joe, our second apprentice also through TDM, is supporting Hazel with frontend design. Having insider knowledge, Joe and Harvey are real assets to Hazel and her apprenticeship. Of course, Marketing Director Chris and Creative Director Dale are offering nuggets of higher-level support to give Hazel the tools to create her own success story through the Digital Marketing Apprenticeship. We have thrown Hazel into the deep end by giving her hands on experience with live tasks and real clients. Of course, practise makes perfect but there’s nothing like the added pressure that helps to understand the repercussions, whether they are positive or negative, to learn in real-time. This hands-on method with the support of the other four guys here have proven extremely successful to date. With Harvey and Joe’s input too, she is so far ahead of where these guys were at this time during their apprenticeships which is testament to the level of understanding the guys have and their subsequent guidance and coaching. Hazel is blessed to have a great team behind her, who are all keen to elevate to their levels. We’re still identifying which areas Hazel would love to avidly pursue within The DM Lab. We feel we can get the best out of people by embracing the areas they are both good at, and most importantly enjoy. Problem is, Hazel seems to be enjoying all of it – which is a blessing as well as a curse! Lately she has applied herself to the following areas: 

• HTML / CSS – understanding the basics and making adjustments to live websites
• Google Ads reporting for clients – sourcing data and insights using various tools and software to compile reports for us to send on to the client
• Learning about how to improve SEO and implementing the basics on new sites
• Google Analytics, checking titles, meta tags, meta descriptions, slugs and keyphrases, to name a few!
• Little bit of web designing – Joe has shown Hazel the basics of frontend web design, creating pages and laying on content with Visual Composer – a WYSIWYG page builder
• Remarketing ads and analysing past campaigns
• Improving user experience by analysing user behaviour on software such as Hotjar

 These past four months have been pretty full-on for Hazel but she is taking it all in and immersing herself into the world of digital marketing, not just at work, but we were particularly impressed that she has opted to listen to marketing podcasts on Spotify!"

Well done Hazel!