For individuals looking to bridge their skills gap and get their foot in the door, the Frontier AI Programme provides the perfect opportunity.
Digital Futures Consultant Sarah Jennings was looking to do just that and used the programme as a platform to launch her data analytics career.
My pre-Digital Futures journey is quite an up and down story. I finished my first degree in business and investment management in 2019 and then went back into university and started a second degree in computer science. I got halfway through that and decided that I’d had enough of studying and took a year off to try and decide what I really wanted. Did I want to stay in technology? Did I want to go down a more business-focused route?
After completing a snowboarding instructor course, I then chose to move to the UK from my native South Africa in search of a new start. That’s when I decided I wanted to become an analyst. I did some online courses in data analytics on Coursera and Google. The courses covered the basics – introductory theory, some Python and some Tableau – and all of that was really helpful in giving me a solid foundation. But I still didn’t have enough experience to secure a role. I was probably applying to 10 or 11 jobs a day and wasn’t hearing back from any of them.
"I wanted something that would help me get my foot in the door. Digital Futures provided me with that opportunity and, having been through so many challenges when trying to apply for roles, it was such a breath of fresh air when they got back to me so quickly"
I was looking left, right and centre for anything that would help me bridge my skills gap between university and the real world. Ultimately, I wanted something that would help me get my foot in the door. Digital Futures provided me with that opportunity and, having been through so many challenges when trying to apply for roles, it was such a breath of fresh air when they got back to me so quickly – they were actually the first company I heard back from and I was so excited to get started.
"The daily icebreakers we had and little breakout chats that we’d have were such a perfect way of building our relationships and were a part of the whole Digital Futures Academy experience that I really loved."
I found the Academy incredibly engaging. The days are long but really fun. My cohort was really close, and we all became friends. Even though we did the training remotely, it was a very cohesive environment, and we all grew together throughout the learning experience.
"Such a perfect way of building our relationships and were a part of the whole Digital Futures Academy experience that I really loved."
When it came to interviewing with clients, the preparation, mock interviews and feedback from the Digital Futures team were so important in making sure I was successful.
I’m deployed in a data analytics role at a global bank. My team is called “Scenario Analysis” and where I work, there’s kind of two pods in one – the transition risk side and the physical risk side. I work on the transition risk side, which is more to do with the financial analysis of the carbon emissions of the company. My team prepares the data for analysis – we do the data cleaning and write scripts before passing the data over to another team to do the analysis of the stress testing.
My normal day starts with a morning stand up at 9.15am, which includes my manager and the rest of the team, and we all talk through what’s going on with our work. I then pretty much code for the rest of the day. I work in Pandas and PySpark mostly and then carry out User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – that’s essentially analysing whether the two data sets that are produced are matching. I also get to do a lot of data quality checks too. At the moment, I’m busy writing a script that checks all the data quality rules of an asset that we produce – this then produces a feedback report on the data quality.
The data and AI training at the Digital Futures Academy has been really important in setting me up for this role, particularly on the Python and Pandas side. We didn’t actually learn PySpark in the Academy, but when I was preparing to start my role, I was given several upskilling courses by the Digital Futures team to help fill some of the gaps in my knowledge. I’ve also done a lot of learning on the job, and I think I was really able to develop that learning mindset from the Academy.
"Learning to speak the corporate language or how to balance my workload or how to tell someone nicely that “I don’t have the capacity to do something now, but I’ll do it later” – these were all things I would never have known how to approach without Digital Futures"
I would also highlight the professional skills side of the training. This is my first job ever aside from being a waitress, so I really had no experience in the corporate world at all. Learning to speak the corporate language or how to balance my workload or how to tell someone nicely that “I don’t have the capacity to do something now, but I’ll do it later” – these were all things I would never have known how to approach without Digital Futures and it was so valuable to have that training and be able to get advice from the team.
One of the things I love is the community that we’re part of at Digital Futures. At the client where I’m deployed, I think we have the largest contingent of Digital Futures consultants and it’s really nice to feel part of something. We all sit next to each other every day and we all have lunch together, so it’s like a proper little community that we’ve formed there. Whenever we go into the office, we know we have someone to sit with and be with and that’s really cool.
The whole environment has been really welcoming, and everyone here is more than happy to help. I also feel that I can ask any questions and someone will answer, no matter how silly I think the questions are! From the Digital Futures side, I’ve been fortunate to not have really faced any issues whilst deployed, but I always feel comfortable expressing how I feel, and I know the team is there to support me every step of the way.
"I think a lot about the confidence I’ve gained through this whole process with Digital Futures"
I think a lot about the confidence I’ve gained through this whole process with Digital Futures – sometimes I don’t realise how much I’ve grown or how much knowledge I’ve gained over time. It’s amazing to be able to reflect on that and realise how transformative this has been for me and my tech career.
