A Digital Marketing Apprentice’s Guide to 100% OTJ | by Amy Ruffhead
What is OTJ?
OTJ (Off The Job) training is a mandatory part of the apprenticeship and must take up to at least 20% of your regular working hours. It can happen at your workplace or virtually and must be teaching you new knowledge, skills, and behaviours.
How do I manage my own OTJ?
When I first started my apprenticeship, trying to get the OTJ up to 100% and staying there was one of the hardest things. I had never embarked on the apprenticeship journey before and OTJ was a new concept for me to try and fit into my day-to-day role.
Firstly, I spoke to my manager about how I could fit OTJ into my current role. The bootcamps I attended helped me relate any knowledge I learnt back into projects I was completing at work.
I have also shadowed different teams in my company, which teaches me valuable professional development skills such as active listening and effective note-taking.
Attending at least one Multiverse Community event each week is another great way to get involved with the community whilst building up your OTJ. I attend events that are based on my interests and that are specific to digital marketing. If I can’t attend an event in person, I try to watch it back as an event recording and use it as a podcast as I’m completing my work.
Examples of what you can do to get your OTJ up to 100%
Applied Learning - you can apply your learnings by implementing any skills you’ve learnt from training sessions, articles, or community events. For example, I presented on one of the projects I had done for my Portfolio. This allowed me an opportunity to review my work to see what I could improve in the project, but also provided me with an effective way to build on areas I want to improve, such as creating presentations and public speaking. By applying my learnings from various areas of the course it helps reinforce the content discussed in the sessions with my coach
Getting involved with the Community - I have successfully built up my OTJ by regularly attending Multiverse events and sessions. However, you don’t only have to attend these events to learn new skills, there is also the opportunity to lead and host community events. I hosted an event a few months ago titled ‘Shameless Self-promotion with Prisca Moyesa’, this was such a fantastic event to host and was beneficial in building my confidence with public speaking. You can watch the event on the Hub under Event Recordings (and of course, it goes towards your OTJ!).
You can also get involved with Development Opportunities on the Community Hub. Being a Peer Volunteer has given me the opportunity to build valuable networking skills with a chance to reflect and share my experience with other like-minded apprentices in different roles/industries. I am still in touch with the people I met through the scheme and we still have regular catch-ups six months on!
Personal Development - One of the easiest ways for me to add to my OTJ is to watch YouTube videos related to Digital Marketing or skills that I want to develop. The videos are useful for when you might not understand a concept discussed in one of your sessions or want to refresh your knowledge. A good Digital Marketing YouTuber is Adam Erhart, who has videos on almost every aspect of digital marketing (his videos on PPC and SEO are particularly useful).
LinkedIn Learning is also a fantastic resource. Similar to YouTube in its amount of content covering so many areas of both professional and personal development. One course I found helpful was “Photoshop for Beginners”, and before I hosted the community event I watched some videos about confidence and public speaking.
My Final Tip for OTJ
Enjoy being able to have the opportunity to develop such a range of skills from such a variety of resources.
Final thoughts
At this stage in my apprenticeship, OTJ has shown to be a great way to help develop myself professionally and personally. It has allowed me to gain many transferable skills that can be applied to different areas of my role. My final tip would be to top up your OTJ as frequently as you can and always look for further training and development opportunities that you can add.
Amy Ruffhead is a Digital Marketing apprentice at Multiverse and is writing for the Apprentice Lens. Here's more about her:
"From working in a pet shop and completing my A-Levels last year, to securing an apprenticeship with one of the biggest TV companies in the UK. I am grateful to be writing what will hopefully be inspiring, engaging and conversation-starting articles for the community. Happy reading!"