The best advisor for any apprentice is The Apprentice – Lee McQueen, 2008 winner of the BBC series – launches K Recruit for K College at the Breakfast for Kent 2020 ’11 Conference and Exhibition on Thursday, April 7, at 7am at the Kent Showground, Detling.

Lee says: ‘Being an apprentice – of sorts – myself, I’m definitely pro-apprenticeships! I will be taking on apprentices in my own business once it is up and running. They’re perfect for giving people the chance to get qualifications but also experience, and my business is all about looking for raw talent.’

After winning The Apprentice, Lee McQueen worked for Sir Alan Sugar, and his son Simon in a £100,00 a year job for two years before setting up his own company, the Raw Talent Academy.



The 32 year old businessman knows that sales have been regarded as a ‘Cinderella’ of business but he says it is now ‘going to the Ball’ with his help – there’s a great opportunity for top talent who might not have paper credentials but are the go getters that businesses need in recession.

Mr McQueen said: ‘Apprentices now come from lots of areas. If you weren’t in manufacturing, then there wasn’t anything but a lot of work has been done in the past two or three years and now there’s lots of opportunities. It’s more business and enterprise focused.

‘I want to encourage those who are not academic, with a background like myself, who maybe haven’t got the best GCSE results. I was the sort of person who excelled at doing stuff. Put me in front of task and I’d be good at it, but I wasn’t good in exam situations. That’s why I didn’t do as well as I could have done. Apprenticeships are perfect for people like me because you’re doing a job while qualifying.’

K College is an active employer and trainer of apprentices. Two of the British Judo competitors, Andrew Panayi and James Martin, both 18, are completing their Advanced Apprenticeship in Sporting Excellence at the Tonbridge campus in Brook Street.

The apprenticeship is open to competitors who are nationally rated sports people. Andrew and James have represented Great Britain at an international level in Judo (under 60Kgs).

James Martin, who has been unable to compete for the past 7 months and had a major operation on a knee injury is particularly aware of how important it is to gain qualifications.

He said: ‘I injured my right knee ligament fighting in Germany. I haven’t been able to compete but I have still been doing my apprenticeship.’

Andrew Panayi said: ‘I can still get qualified and train for my sport. If anything happens, I will still have the qualifications to fall back on. It’s very hard to find something that allows you to train to get to the highest level, but this does.’

Lee McQueen agrees apprenticeships are a perfect balance for many young people for whom the traditional A Levels are not appropriate for many reasons.

He said: ‘I think schools need to look at what life skills we need to have to be employable, what’s needed in business and the real world.

‘I’ve seen the horrendous youth unemployment figures. But young people are staying on at school or going to university for reasons that are just not correct… they don’t know what they’re doing it for. Yes, there are plenty of opportunities where you need a degree but my business is sales and you don’t need a degree for that, you need the raw attributes.

‘What’s come to life for me since I won The Apprentice is, my passion is around trying to get youngsters to realize to be employable you need skills that you can’t get in an exam, relationship building, team building, communicating with people. Trying to find good employable people is difficult, But apprenticeships can help the employee and the employer and that’s what is going to bring this country out of the current difficult economic situation.’