IT Support Specialist Review

My role at Fujitsu consists of maintaining the work force and telephony system of a service centre, maintaining the work force is done via a SQL Server database and custom tooling provided for the role, maintaining the telephony is done via tooling provided by the telephony provider that looks into a backend Informix SQL database. Specifically my apprenticeship, a Data Science apprenticeship, sees me looking at the data I am able to access and performing queries on it to see current trends in relation to work force attrition and general performance of the work force via the telephony system.

I have been learning techniques on how is best to store large datasets, as well as how to efficiently query them. Using the data I have access to I have been learning new ways to visualise the data, both via Excel and external visualisation tooling. I have also been learning some coding to help extract the data from the databases and also to plot the data in Excel sheets or to even provide visualisations in small applications.

I have been enjoying the programme as I find the concept of using data to make informed decisions interesting, and being able to visualise this data and fully understand the scale of it helps me better understand the importance of it. I am hoping to be able to take the skills I have learned from this apprenticeship and apply them in full to my role and any future roles I enter. With my experience so far I would recommend this apprenticeship for anyone with an interest in Data Science.

The programme is very well structured, we received important dates for bootcamps and module learning sessions for the entire duration of the apprenticeship almost immediately into entering it, keeping on top of our apprenticeship work is also very easy as there are existing tools/websites in place to help log your time working on apprenticeship related work and record your evidence. We are also given several weeks notice when an important meeting is taking place such as meeting with our line manager and/or coach, or if there is a webinar we can attend or podcast we can listen to.

I have been receiving a tremendous amount of support from my employer, upon entering the apprenticeship we were all greeted by a member of HR along with someone from the apprenticeship consultant team. My line manager has also been providing me with encouragement. We also get introduced to professionals working within Fujitsu from within the area our apprenticeship applies, as during our first session we were run through a power point presentation by someone from within the Data Protection area of the business.

I am within a Slack group with the rest of the apprenticeship members, along with our coach/tutor, and our coach has been providing us with several online resources we can use to help learn about our apprenticeship and what to do with data. In an earlier question I mentioned about podcasts and webinars, it is within this Slack group that our coach and other members of the apprenticeship are able to provide details on these podcasts and webinars.

Seeing as my role involves maintaining a live work force, I feel that the qualification and the experience and knowledge I have obtained through it will help me tremendously. Specifically I feel I will be able to apply it to several reports we provide on the work force and the performance of this work force, I will be able to take the coding I learn from the apprenticeship and perform complex predictions and receive valuable insights into the way the work force moves around and generally performs.

There usually are activities to take part in such as company hosted events, usually in the name of charity or raising awareness for a specific cause, and also the occasional social event. However with the current pandemic it has been hard to attend any of these, so I don't feel that I can provide an accurate review of them. What I can say however is that Fujitsu, and the training provider, have adapted to online/remote working very well and as such I feel that I am still able to attend online variants of the previously mentioned events.

Yes

Fujitsu is a large company with a vast amount of array of professionals and work place areas in which you can learn from, they not only help you develop your skills but can also place you into an area where you can apply these skills. Due to the size of the company it is also a brilliant place to progress your career, this is because there is always somewhere higher to reach for, and provided you're willing to put the time and effort in these new areas are usually happy to provide an insight and help towards reaching them.

The biggest piece of advice I can provide is to come up with a decision on the direction you'd like to go within the company, the reason behind this is because of the size of Fujitsu there are almost a limitless amount of options in terms of career decisions, so going in with a general idea of where you want to be can definitely help you get there. I found my experience entering the role and apprenticeship was smooth.