What helped you stand out in interviews for tech or IT apprenticeship roles, and are there any specific types of in-person work experience or courses you’d recommend to strengthen my application and skills?

Hi Fola,Having virtual experiences behind you is definitely a strong start. I didn't have any software background knowledge when I applied, so I sold my ability to learn/adapt quickly & use my soft skills to empower my team members to perform (similarly, that's why I do this 😊). I showed this by presenting non-technical projects in interviews (because I had done none) with emphasis on how I took on responsibility to lead and reflectively make decisions with feedback from people involved in the project. Also in one interview, my group ran out of time and we had to present without a plan - so I led this presentation and seamlessly created an idea off the cuff as I was speaking on how we'd follow my introduction, with explaining our individual ideas based on slides quickly created (allowing everyone an equal chance to speak), and then I closed of with final thoughts. Moreover, I supported one applicant who didn't really speak at all (probably because of nerves - I was also nervous) by affirming her ideas as she presented with positive "hmm hmms" and nodding, and mentioning in the closing off that her ideal was actually the most insightful and well thought of (which it genuinely was). Personally, I think this helped my individual visibility to recruiters in a collaborative/constructive way, as I showed I want others to win just as much as I want to win myself and can think creatively to adapt/deliver something based on the [link removed] respect to experiencing IT environments - if you mean technically, I know it's not in-person, but Linkedin is a good way to find professionals and ask them for insights or to collaborate/support projects. They could review your code or have meetings to discuss best practices in the activities you're interested in, which you can then implement and get a feel for in your own project - I'm open to helping if you ping me there too. I'd say software/IT is a very replicable industry so being in the office isn't overly required unless you're a hardware/networks/control systems engineer. If you mean physically, I'd say that you could reach out to an employer (especially local) and see if they can allow to come in for in-person experience (this may be difficult due to data sensitive nature of the software/IT industry). I'm not sure which in-person experiences/events are available but gradcracker offers insight events, so you could see if there are any [link removed] that was hepful 😊