IT
Guidance – sales and marketing director Andrew Ballantyne( left) and apprentice Charlie Pearson( centre) with the firm’ s co-founder and technical director Tom Roberton.
BUILDING FUTURE THEIR
WORDS: DAVE ROBSON PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH
How apprentices are a big part of Circle Cloud’ s success
Employing keen and talented apprentices can be game-changing for an ambitious firm.
And for IT support and cybersecurity specialist Circle Cloud, it’ s been a major factor in its continuing success and expansion.
Since it was founded in 2013, five of the Stockton-based firm’ s nine-strong team began their careers as apprentices, with newest recruit Charlie Pearson the latest.
But Circle Cloud apprentices don’ t stay inexperienced for long. Because of the firm’ s clear operating model and supportive environment, they’ re soon fully armed with all the tools they need to help SMEs with their IT and security needs.
Sales and marketing director Andrew Ballantyne explained:“ One of the reasons apprentices work for us is because we have a very specific business model built around our particular target market, SMEs.
“ We’ re all about IT support with cybersecurity built in for SMEs. To deliver that, we work with a purpose-built design to deliver our management plan that’ s built around a specific product set, one of which is Microsoft.
“ So that means we can create a very targeted and well-structured training programme for apprentices.
“ With us, it’ s not a case of,‘ Do this, do that, make the tea’ – from day one, apprentices know exactly what they’ ll be doing. And because of that, there’ s clarity in the training and a fast-track to good, targeted product knowledge.
“ Understanding the customer is something we value massively. We know the challenges our SME market faces so we focus on getting our apprentices involved in real-world customer issues and upscaling their knowledge about customer environments very quickly.”
The last two service desk hires have both been apprentices – Charlie and, before him, David Abrantes, who recently finished his apprenticeship and is on a clear career path.
After joining in 2023 with little or no experience, David is now a skilled and confident service desk engineer.
And that sort of progression, says company co-founder and technical director Tom Roberton, is exactly what Circle Cloud’ s business model lends itself to.
Tom – who also started his career as an apprentice, back in 2007 – said:“ There can be a barrier in IT, where you end up in a cycle where you haven’ t got the experience or skills to get the exposure but without the exposure, you can’ t get the experience or the skills.
“ It’ s a very common scenario in the IT industry, so people end up getting banded in roles where they can’ t really progress properly.
“ But because we have a very specific, repeatable model for a set market that benefits the business in a lot of ways and one of those is training and development.
“ Our senior architect, who has worked at enterprise organisations, has designed our offering and all the technical side but because it’ s standardised, he’ s created fully detailed procedures for people to follow to set it all up.
28 | Tees Business