CTTS recuit strikes out for Communications industry

Private Alison Palmer joined the Army's Royal Logistic Corps in 1996 aged 16. After training, she was posted as a Driver to 27 Regiment in Aldershot, although she spent her first six months in Northern Ireland and went on to a posting in Kosovo with the 19 Tank Transporter Regiment. She enjoyed Army life to the full, instructing Karate and later taking up Ladies Boxing.

Sadly she was injured at the Ladies Boxing Championships and medically discharged early last year with few civilian skills except those she had learnt through her Army training.

She says ''I'd certainly never considered leaving the Army, but all of a sudden I was faced with a change of career.'' After a lot of thought and speaking to both friends and colleagues, Alison decided to go for the fibre-optics industry. ''Once I'd made that decision, I began to look round at different course options. It was at that point that a friend recommended CTTS - Cable Telecommunications Training Services - based at North Lincolnshire College. He'd literally just finished their course and said it was excellent.''

On that recommendation, Palmer enrolled, choosing Fibre Optics Singlemode and Multimode with Data Comms and Telecommunications. ''I have to say that at first, I found the course quite hard going; but they are so thorough, if you don't get it the first time they go through it with you until it finally sinks in,'' she reports. For the final part of the Course -a two-week work placement, she was placed with a local Telecom company who then offered her a full time position. ''It is funny how things turn out,'' she says. ''I never imagined leaving the Army but now I'm enjoying a whole new career.'' After six months in her new job, installing telecom lines in businesses of all sizes, she enjoys everything about it including meeting new poeple and facing a different challenges every day.