Drive Your Future with a John Deere Apprenticeship

Hi, I'm Alan. I'm the training manager for John Deere for the UK and Ireland. And over the next few minutes, I want to talk you through our apprenticeship offerings and why you should choose a John Deere apprenticeship for your future. So starting with, who are John Deere and why should you choose us for your apprenticeship? The company itself. Founded in 1837 in Midwest America, we very quickly moved from building agricultural equipment into manufacturing tractors and innovation. And moving that technology forward has always been at the front forefront of our history. In 2023, we marked the milestone of 2 million tractors produced out of our Mannheim factory in Germany. And it now sits in the museum, along with the one millionth tractor and the very first tractor that was produced in that factory. But as a company, we're much more than just tractors. We build forestry equipment, we harvest more than half of the world's wheat with John Deere combine harvesters, and overall, we build more than 100 different lines of equipment, all the way from residential ride on moors, through golf and turf, through construction, forestry, road building equipment, and obviously the agricultural tractors that we become very familiar with. As a global company, we're located in more than 100 locations around the globe and employ about 75 and a half thousand employees in those locations. And our core values of integrity, quality, commitment and innovation are extremely important to us, from the quality of our product to the innovations that we currently strive for every moment of every day bringing to the market. But from your perspective, what makes this interesting for you, what makes this industry interesting for you? For me, when I joined the company, it was growing up playing with Lego, you know, LEGO tractors, building them, seeing what you could make, and actually being innovative in what you could build with that Lego nowadays, it's probably much more farm simulator and computers and, you know, seeing how you can be a true farmer online. But if it's other technologies and other industries that provide interest for you, whether it be electrification with Audi with their first Le Mans race car, food, electric, competing on a level playing field, or whether it's Formula One with the telematics, as you see them all sitting on the pit wall monitoring their computers, or even Tesla with their automation and their fully autonomous cars, each one of those technologies that we've just mentioned belong in the John Deere world set with John Deere products and everything that we work with on a daily basis. So wherever you find your interest in any of these items and many, many more, there is a place for you within the John Deere apprenticeship program and ultimately a career with John Deere. Is all about the three P's, it's all about the people finding those right, people who are passionate and want to deliver their best for the customers. Having the product, building the quality product that customers want, that's got the innovation and the technology that customers need to deliver the food that feeds the world for today. And finally, the performance. Ultimately, as part of our apprenticeship, we're about giving individuals the skills and the capabilities to make our machines perform and make the performance. The customer gets the best that we possibly can do from them. But that's all looking a little bit about where we are and who John Deere are and what we can offer you. Well, take a bit of a deeper look now into the apprenticeship itself and what that actually looks like for you as an individual. So, at John Deere, we offer three apprenticeship programs, starting with the Ag tech, where you will work with a John Deere dealer, working on large agricultural equipment, tractors, combine harvesters, forage harvesters, etc. Helping our customers feed the world. Moving to our turf TEC apprenticeship, that's working in the turf and grounds care business with our dealers. Anything from servicing and maintaining equipment at the Premier league football clubs to working with some of the best golf courses around the world. Moving on to our parts tech apprenticeship. Ultimately, you are the face of the brand, the face of, of the business at that point, the first person they see when they come through the door, delivering that customer service, finding that part and allowing them to get their job done. So we deliver all of those three apprenticeships through our apprentice training centre in Nottinghamshire. If I spend a moment just looking in more detail about the AgTech apprenticeship, but this would apply equally to the Turf TEC one as well, and look at the detail of what that looks like. So we split it into various phases as we go forward from there. So we start with our recruitment and selection phase and if you go to our apprenticeship finder website, you can see open positions from there. But once you're on the program, you start with phase one, which starts in your first year of training. And that's about understanding what makes machine work. You know, remember back to that Lego tractor. It's about taking things apart, understanding what they are and understanding how to put them back together again. And we cover that very much in the first year of your training through phase one. If we move forward into the second year and phase two of your training, it becomes much more about understanding how those pieces work. So when you've got them apart, understanding the components that go to make them up, how to put them back together again and understanding how they interact with one another to get the output, whether it be an engine or a transmission or other components from there. And then we go on to phase three of the program, and that is in your third year. And that's much more about understanding the diagnostics, how to understand why a component has failed, understanding how to fix it. And ultimately the most important part of that is understanding what, why it failed and how to stop it failing again. So we train all that over those three phases of the apprenticeship program. And then you move forward to your endpoint assessment, which is around your achieving your qualification and completing the assessments associated with that. So that's you showcasing the skills and the competencies that you've learned during that time, not only with us on your training, but back at the dealership as well, learning the job and learning the industry from there. And after successful completion of that through John Deere and our training provider, Provq, you know, you will then move on to a successful future career as a technician and many, many other things from there. So I want to take a few moments to look at what happens beyond the apprenticeship. Ultimately, apprenticeship is only one element of your career that's setting the foundation stone for you to be successful for the future going forward from there. Running in parallel with your technical apprenticeship, agtech or turf tech, we also run a program called Certified Technician through John Deere dealers. And ultimately what that is is you achieving a John Deere certification through the similar three stages of training that we've just talked through on the apprenticeship program to become a John Deere certified technician at that point, then that unlocks your access to higher level training and higher level development through the rest of your career to become specialized in certain areas of the business. So there's multiple paths, you know, even after you reach your qualifications that you can achieve from there, then you look what does your future hold? We're talking about a three year apprenticeship. Technology is changing so quickly at the moment. There is a huge amount will change over that period of three years. You look at the new technologies coming in today. We talked electrification a few moments ago. We're already producing our fully electric equipment, whether it be in the turf and ground care business, whether it be in the construction business, and at some point in the future, moving into the agricultural business. Autonomous vehicles. We've already launched our fully autonomous tractors so they can go out into the field and work on their own with no operator around. And then from a technology point of view, managing how crops grow by using technology and artificial intelligence to determine whether we need to provide fertilizer to a seed to help it grow or we need to provide chemicals to kill weeds in the crops to allow the crops to flourish and grow more. So using that technology, building a strong future and and actually embracing that going forward is what your future looks like. So what I would suggest the key takeaways of what we've just spoken about are ultimately build yourself a career, not just complete an apprenticeship. And we offer that career path going forward from there. Be part of a world leading organization at the fe forefront of technology and innovation as it has been for over the last 180 years. And ultimately our goal is to provide the solutions for our customers needs so that they can grow crops and ultimately feed the world as we go forward from there. So your future is in your hands. You can achieve what you believe. All of our apprenticeship positions are listed on our Apprenticeship Finder website. Or visit your local John Deere dealer today to see the positions they have available for you. So drive your future. Start a John Deere apprenticeship.