Lloyds Banking Group is looking for 30 IT apprentices to take up specialist roles that it says cannot be filled by graduates.
The group, which is the parent company of high street bank Lloyds TSB, is looking for school leavers with a strong academic record who have demonstrated a clear interest in IT or related subjects. Applicants do not have to have work experience, and the group hopes that A-Level candidates see the apprenticeship as a viable alternative to university.
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Brian Roddick, head of colleague IT services at Lloyds Banking Group, said that the firm has a "raft of very specialist roles that require significant legacy insight".
"These are not skills that can be readily purchased from the market, nor are they readily available from those that join us directly from university. By implementing an IT apprenticeship pathway in this way, we believe it will encourage A-Level students to join us - this allows them to learn while they earn. The upside for us is that we are able to create a rolling programme that provides us with the IT expertise we need, not simply for the here and now, but for many decades to come," he added.
The apprentices will get an intensive induction programme before training on the job. They will be supported by a structured development programme over an 18-month period, Lloyds said.
Positions will be available in Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Gloucester, London, Manchester and Yorkshire.
Back in 2011, Lloyds Banking Group announced thousands of job cuts, with some suggesting that 40,000 staff had been let go, mainly as a result of is merger with HBOS. Many of the cuts affected back-office staff.
More recently, the group's 631 high street branches were set to be acquired by the Co-operative Bank in a deal that would have meant the Co-op writing down up to £200m of IT investments, enabling the proposed combined bank to operate on a separated version of the existing Lloyds Banking Group IT platform.
However, the planned sale fell through in April and Lloyds said it would be seeking to sell the branches as a stand-alone bank through a stock market listing.
