Heywood
Following years of running successful graduate development programmes, Heywood wanted to expand recruitment offers to a more diverse base of people, including those who hadn’t necessarily been to university or had experience in a software company.
The answer was clear: to offer apprenticeships and apply many of the same graduate development methods - clear progression pathways, expert Heywood mentors and a focus on learning.After extensive research and provider selection, Heywood created the first Data Technician Apprentice role for the Heywood Insights team, the business intelligence platform for forward-thinking pension providers.
Mindful that applicants may have had little experience in interviewing, Heywood created an interactive assessment day to look for someone confident in their ability to take an active role in discussions and work well as part of a group.
Katharine Jones was hired, and this is her story.
When did your career begin, and what were you doing?
I did a pharmacy degree at Nottingham University and an extra year of on-the-job training to qualify as a pharmacist.I was always interested in science, particularly biology and medicine but I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor. My mum worked in a hospital in Liverpool, so I’d spent some time there, and it seemed like an interesting career.
When I first qualified, I worked in a Norwich hospital, where I developed my interest in mental health pharmacy, which I later specialised in. The role of pharmacy wasn’t as developed as it is now, and pharmacists weren’t really part of acute hospital multidisciplinary teams but the mental health services were different and I was able to be much more involved in patient care.
When did you realise you wanted to make a change?
As time went on, I realised pharmacy wasn’t quite my passion. I had been working in a very demanding role and wanted a better work-life balance, so I intended to work as a locum community pharmacist for a year or two, which turned into seven or eight!
Eventually, I got to a point where I felt I could step away and manage the drop in income that retraining would cause.
Throughout my career and especially in community pharmacy, there is a lot of problem-solving and ensuring decisions are made with the best evidence available. The way to get that is by using data in a good way.
I also really like the satisfaction of tidying up, starting with a big mess of information and acquiring the skills to make it into something that makes sense to people and helps them make good decisions. It’s making order out of chaos!
I started doing lots of research and taking online taster courses and training. I enrolled in a boot camp in data analysis. One piece of advice from the course was to do an apprenticeship as the next step.
What was your Heywood apprenticeship experience like?
Heywood is very good at taking on apprentices. There was a lot of preparation before I started, and now that I’ve finished my apprenticeship, they’re working to put things in place to support my development pathway.
From the beginning, it was very clear that I had a permanent role and that the apprenticeship was a training programme with a job at the end, which isn’t always the case with apprenticeships.
The new starter programme at Heywood is really good. It covered all the different departments, and you’d either watch a video or meet someone from each area. It was really useful to learn who’s who in the business and who the right people to ask for help are.
As part of the apprenticeship, I had a day per week ‘off the job’ where I focused on learning things, doing my online training or writing up the projects and reflection on what I’d learned.
I always had the study time I needed and the time and support from the team. I had specific mentors, but everyone supported me in different aspects of my learning, taking the time to let me shadow them and explaining processes.
I had a good balance of getting on and trying to do things and being shown. I was never left to struggle.
A big piece of advice to other people taking an apprenticeship would be to ensure your manager and wider team know as much as possible about the course criteria. I did this, and it meant that if the team came across a piece of work or knowledge that they knew would help me, they made sure I got involved.
What’s next for you?
I want to increase my skills, particularly in presenting dashboards and improving my product knowledge. The apprenticeship was really good for building general data analysis skills, so it’s about putting everything into practice, using the data and shaping it to answer questions.
I’m also looking forward to working with customers. Since the apprenticeship finished, I’ve shadowed many interactions and I’m now learning to answer queries and present new ideas to customers.
Since successfully completing her apprenticeship, Katharine is now a Junior Data Analytics Consultant. Please visit our careers page for more information on our culture, life at Heywood and current vacancies.