Data Analyst Apprentice Review

My role as a data analyst apprentice means I work from Monday to Thursday and do university on Friday. Since beginning this apprenticeship, some of the tasks I have completed involved pulling together information in excel and using it to send "Action required" emails to other employees, going through some data and deciding which would be useful to bring into a dashboard, listing use cases for products created by the department I'm in to demonstrate value, and other tasks. During meetings, I either just listen if they are talks or presentations, and if it's a work meeting, the topic is usually updates on what work each person is doing and what to do moving forward.

A couple of things I've either learnt or am currently learning include Qlik and how to use it to make dashboards, learning how to code AI models in python, SQL to type BigQuery queries to extract data, SAFe which is the way my department teams work, some new Excel skills, and a couple of soft skills including networking and how to behave or conduct yourself in a corporate environment.

I very much enjoy my programme because I love the content I'm learning, especially coding. I find the tasks I do to be enjoyable, as well as gaining knowledge about the tooling and capabilities used in my department and why. However, one thing I don't enjoy, which may be due to my anxiety and impatience, is the steep learning curve for how to do work in my company. Unfortunately, because I work quite slowly and don't know how to do certain things, I feel like I let down others in my project team because I take too long to deliver. As I keep learning, this problem becomes less severe, but I don't at all like telling my team that I didn't make much progress during our work meetings. I think I would find my programme more enjoyable if I got more helpful guidance, while still being able to use my initiative and not being spoon fed all the time.

My programme is generally well organised. On the university side, there have been a couple of problems with assignment deadlines and some tools not working. The university site where we get our resources, work and where we submit assignments is quite user-friendly. However, there is another site we need to use to submit some other things, which is quite the polar opposite of user-friendly. On the work side, sometimes it feels like I have too little work to do (when I don't have work I just learn things related to work on my own - called personal development) and sometimes after getting work, what exactly I should do and the purpose of it is quite unclear. However, as I'm becoming more familiar with the organisation, the work I'm doing and the purpose for doing it is becoming clearer.

I receive a good amount of support from my employer. My colleagues and manager care about my wellbeing as well as my work and encourage my to structure my time the way I see fit. Although I have anxiety when I need to ask for help for fear of getting scolded, everyone around me is supportive and have always helped me.

I receive a good amount of support from my training provider. When I need help on assignments and other content, the university site has all the available resources, and I'm in contact with the lecturers and other staff so I can receive help from them, which they're very friendly about. When it comes to asking for help, I'm quite comfortable asking my training provider.

My qualification and my role are directly related in terms of content, but as of now there are only a limited number of times my qualification has helped me with my role, because the content I learn at university just hasn't applied much to the tasks I've done so far.

So far I haven't gotten involved much with extra curricular activities. There are some socials I went to and some company events I took part in, such as quizzes, games, and workshops. For university, I also took part in some events, such as talks and games. I have signed up to a professional networking event, but haven't attended.

Yes

Vodafone is a good place to work for, and has been ranked before as one of the best places to work for. The work environment is healthy and colleagues are nice, respectful and understanding. Everyone helps each other and people work as a team. The office I work in is also in a nice location with good amenities and close to public transport.

1) When it comes to interview questions, try and go into detail, properly answering the why, what, and how of the question, and clearly justify your answer. Look up potential interview questions and write answers for them and practise them. 2) For the different assessment centres, it would be beneficial to practise a lot, so perhaps look up some information, practice tests, videos on the internet.