Apprenticeship opportunities give Kim the power and passion for promotion. Here, she tells us her story.

I have been working at Wetherspoon since February 2016, starting when I was 18 as a bar associate at The Sir Henry Tate. I was promoted to team leader after a year, starting my level 3 hospitality supervisor apprenticeship in May 2018.

In August 2018, I responded to an e-mail calling for people in my area who wanted to move up the ladder. Following a recruitment day, I was promoted to shift leader on the basis that I would move pubs to The Twelve Tellers.

Once I’d completed my level 3 qualification, I immediately wanted to start my level 4 hospitality manager apprenticeship programme, as I’d found it so valuable. Even though it was a lot of work, I found that it did relate heavily to what I was already doing, so it didn’t feel too difficult.

I was further promoted to shift manager in October 2020, delayed slightly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this meant that I could commence my level 4 apprenticeship soon afterwards. I completed my level 4 alongside my Wetherspoon management academy and found that they really complemented each other.

In November 2022, I moved pubs again to The Leyland Lion and completed my level 4 in January 2023.

I have just started my level 5 operations/departmental manager apprenticeship and am really looking forward to furthering my knowledge of the business. In the future, I’d like to move into a training role and feel that my apprenticeships have helped me to not only become a better manager, but also know what a good trainer looks like.

Hospitality was not the career I had planned for myself, but I knew quite quickly that it was something I really enjoyed and could excel at. My apprenticeships have helped me massively to gain in confidence and knowledge about not just Wetherspoon, but the industry in general.

In every pub I’ve worked at, I’ve been one of the only people doing an apprenticeship and the only person to have completed it, so I have become an ambassador for it, promoting it to anyone who shows interest.

My favourite thing about doing the apprenticeships is being able to learn more about myself, while furthering my career. It’s also a great bonus that Wetherspoon pays for everything for me – and I know that I won’t have any apprenticeship debt to worry about in future. I am the only person in my family’s generation who didn’t go to university, so I’m really grateful that I have this opportunity now, at Wetherspoon, and I look forward, once I’ve completed level 5, to doing the level 6 degree apprenticeship.