Baltic Training Apprentice Develops Baltic Apprenticeships App

A North East apprentice has developed a new mobile app for his training provider. Matty Forth is an apprentice software developer at Mobile Rocket, a Newton Aycliffe based app development company.

Since starting an apprenticeship in 2016, Matty has had the chance to work on projects for a range of clients. Most recently, he helped to develop the Baltic Apprenticeships app.

As a technical training provider, it made sense for Baltic to put faith in an apprentice to help them with their new project.

And they didn’t have far to look – Baltic and Mobile Rocket have neighbouring offices within Aycliffe Business Park.

Brooke Urwin, Marketing Manager at Baltic, said: “To have one of our own apprentices work on and develop our app was fantastic. It was excellent to see how Matty implemented his apprenticeship training and approached our project with great professionalism and creativity.”

The purpose of the app is to support apprenticeship candidates through each stage of their application by providing guidance, resources and reminders. Key features include interview prep, CV tips and learning materials to help applicants secure a tech apprenticeship.

This project may seem like a big challenge for an apprentice, but Matty has acquired a host of development skills through on and off the job training. His knowledge in object-oriented programming, HTML and Cordova has been put to the test while developing the Baltic app. There has also been a significant improvement to his confidence in communicating and problem-solving.

Progressing onto a higher level training programme gave Matty the opportunity to step up even further. He explained: “when I moved onto my level 4 apprenticeship from a level 3, I was given more responsibility. My role has definitely changed and I’m involved in much bigger things than I was when I started.”

Matty’s hard work has not gone unnoticed by his employer. Mobile Rocket’s Managing Director, Adam Lee, described how Matty became a critical part of their development team: “we were really surprised with how brilliant Matthew was. He didn’t think twice about getting stuck into the projects; he just asked loads of questions. He is now a massive asset to the team.”

Adam is eager to continue bringing new talent into the business: “we’ve taken on more apprentices since and we’ll take on more in the future as well.” Thanks to Matty, Baltic also have a lot to look forward to, including the launch of their new app on iOS and Android.

Brooke summed up her experience of working with Mobile Rocket: “this is a superb success story for us and it’s exactly why Baltic are committed to supporting more young people into the tech sector – so we can see them grow and flourish in such sought after roles.”