Data Science Apprentice Review

My role involves working on a variety of projects that relate to our company’s data and how we can extract the most insight to benefit our customers, colleagues and business as a whole. Day to day I am leading on developing new ways of visualising our data, managing stakeholders and project planning.

When I started the apprenticeship at 18 I was very timid and never valued myself. Not over two years into the scheme and I have developed a lot of confidence when it comes to my skill set. From soft skills such as communicating I’ve developed thanks to my line managers who have believed in me and allowed me to present to senior managers, and learning technical skills like python programming thanks to my training provider.

It’s been an amazing journey overall. I won’t sugarcoat the scheme as there have been some ups and downs as the apprenticeship was brand new, but I am grateful for the opportunity Santander gave me, and continues to give me - I have made some amazing friends, gained trustworthy mentors, developed a variety of skills and above all I can now see my value and start to understand what I want out of my career!

My apprenticeship has been challenging to a certain extent. As mentioned previously, my scheme was brand new and that was reflected in our communications we received from the employer and training providers. But a brilliant part of our structure has to be our support, when we join we are assigned individual “buddys” who are apprentices currently in Santander to guide us, we are also allocated an “apprentice manager” who stays with us the duration of our programme to monitor our performance and coach us on different workplace skills.

Our team-mates are the people we interact with everyday and from my experience they have all been very flexible and supportive with my programme, they always allow me to try new ideas and ask questions. Our assigned apprentice managers are there to oversee our performance both workplace and academic and I catch up every two weeks with mine to raise any concerns and review my performance. And Santander as a whole offers many different support systems such as people networks that host events on women in business, fitness with Jessica Ennis etc. and most recently a Graduate and Apprentice network was created to support us on our programmes so we can interact with like minded people!

My previous training provider that we completed our level 4 with, Multiverse offered an individual coach who was very instructive and supportive - we’d have 1:1s every month to review next steps and work towards the EPA (end point assessment). Now we are with Nottingham Trent University the structure is more traditional and can be harder to obtain unique support - and once again as it’s a new programme, they haven’t specified our EPA in much detail.

They most definitely relate to each other! From day one we were learning about Big Data and database design which I now use in my current project with a tool called IBM IDA! And our most recent module is about information security…to understand cyber attacks and how to prevent them! Useful no matter what our future job may be!

There are a variety of noventa hosted by our people networks (women in business, ethnicity@work, social mobility, mental well-being…) which are all based online now. Most business areas or teams tend to provide monthly townhalls to stay up to date on all the strategies in the bank. And every quarter we normally have a social all together as a team which is fun! (And free)

Yes

For someone starting their career, Santander offers great ways of working to accommodate your development. And the support networks from buddys to apprentice networks really make a difference! They also offer great opportunities to develop internally such as leadership courses, international exchanges to work with a different country. And being able to move every 9 months to a new team really opens your eyes to how a business operates which can only be obtained through a programme like ours!

Santander have 5 key principles to live everyday by - I’d be sure to showcase how you’ve demonstrated those behaviours. When I applied - I had a video interview then a 4 hour assessment centre (which sounds worse than it is!) I’d say applying for apprenticeships they aren’t looking for perfection…or complete knowledge on the subject of the programme…what they are looking for is A PASSION for learning! Show them how eager you are to develop new skills. :)