Former City College student Rachel completed her business course and, after securing a place on one of the top 20 Graduate Programmes in the country, now works at Jaguar Land Rover.
“Prior to enrolling on the Business course at the College, I had dropped out of studying conventional A Levels as the method of teaching wasn’t suited to my learning style,” Rachel said. “So instead I took up a job opportunity working full time in a customer service role. After working for a six months and seeing no potential for large-scale progression, I knew I had more to offer therefore started looking for courses which would be a pathway to university.
“I chose to study at City College so that I could still work part time in the local area. I enjoyed the variety the course had to offer, giving a well-rounded overview to the core elements of business in the real world. As part of our enterprise unit, we were also tasked with creating and launching our own business as part of a small team, teaching us the importance of structure and the discipline required to run your own company.
“My time at City College allowed me to progress onto a degree in Finance and Business at Bournemouth University, which incidentally led to me securing a place on one of the top 20 Graduate Programmes in the country at Jaguar Land Rover. Ultimately without the support from the college for applying to University, my further education and career path could have been very different!
“I currently work within Programme Management for the logistics function at Jaguar Land Rover in the West Midlands, where my role involves planning and forecasting for future vehicle programmes, all to ensure that our suppliers can deliver parts successfully so that our cars will be built to schedule and reach our customers on time. I have also been lucky enough to be involved with running events at Silverstone and have also had the opportunity to spend a day off-roading in a Range Rover and check out the cars we produced for the latest James Bond film, Spectre (pictured). My next steps are to complete a professional accreditation and work towards securing a management role.
“The BAF Diploma is fantastic for giving a well-rounded insight into a variety of business operations and is very beneficial if you are looking to develop a career in the business world. The course offers so many opportunities and has essentially been the starting point which opened so many doors for me in terms of moving away to study a degree and landing a great job!”
