Learn more about Harry's experience, from the time he applied to The Data School, to his career as a Data Visualization Analyst at Close Brothers. Harry was part of Cohort 23 of The Data School London, which took place from April 2021 to August 2023.
Interviewed by Mel Niere | Edited by Lyon Abido
Before The Data School
Q: What brought you to The Data School? What factors influenced your decision to apply and ultimately join The Data School?
I was pretty much straight out of University. We'd been in lockdown for a little bit of time and I was applying for just about every consultancy job, not even data-specific roles, just every consultancy job I could find in and around London.
To varying degrees of success, I managed to get through a few assessment centres and things like this, but none of these jobs were really jumping out to me.. I was reaching the end of my tether a little bit and then I got sent by the Graduate Recruitment Bureau (GRB) the job listing for The Information Lab. They (GRB) had sent me loads of opportunities in the past and I was treating them all the same, so I thought, I’ll have a look and see what I think.
I went in for a Meet & Greet with The Data School in November 2021, met Andy Kriebel plus a few other people and thought, “wow, it’s a receptive company”. I’m already sitting in an office speaking to people, finding out about the job, learning what they do day-to-day. I thought it was really interesting stuff and decided to take a bit more of a look at the opportunity at The Data School.
Seeing the application process, I knew I didn’t have to send my CV (resume) and look like every other person who would apply for any similar role, and that was really intriguing to me; it was a major reason why I applied.
I also had done a lot of stats-based stuff at University. I completed a Biology degree but a lot of what I did was more on the math side of things rather than life sciences. I knew I enjoyed the data side of things anyway, and when I saw it was essentially two pieces of software, I was conscious that the technology market was growing at the time. Along with being interested in data and math, I was also keen on the opportunity to work with four different clients over a space of two years to help find out what I wanted to do, because at 22 years old, I had no idea.
The Information Lab and The Data School ticked all those boxes for me. Going through the Data School’s application process was quite an engaging process. I think in a lot of other companies the process was to send in a CV and do assessments or online surveys.
That type of process is not personalized. I always wondered what’s the point, I could be anyone at the end of the day. For The Data School, I had spoken to Luke (the head of recruitment) and to seven or eight Data School consultants; I’d spoken to several people who were posting their work on Twitter or Tableau Public. The process was very refreshing for me.
I thought The Data School was too good to be true, then I got there and it actually ended up being the case. It was really my first proper job out of University, and I very much landed on my feet.
During The Data School
Q: What was your training experience like?
I started my training during lockdown so nearly all my training was done remotely. Teaching was done through Zoom calls and things like that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably not the ideal way to do these sorts of things, but the amount we still managed to learn given that I wasn't in-person training, being taught face-to-face was still pretty incredible.
We did two months of training before we started doing one-week client projects, in which we had a real range of industries. We worked with all sorts of people and organizations. I worked with the NHS, a few banks and financial organizations. We actually found out later on that one of our reports ended up making it in front of Rishi Sunak before he became the Prime Minister. So that's kind of cool that we produced something a country’s leader ended up seeing a couple of months later.
I was three months into the job and I was already doing stuff that I thought was more impactful than a lot of my friends, who had been in jobs for a year or two longer and were not enjoying it half as much as I was.
The training was great. I had loads of different teachers and tutors and there was variation in what we were doing. No one day would be all the same thing: we'd have Tableau days, we’d have Alteryx days, and we’d have soft skills days. I think a lot of these data-oriented companies tend to neglect soft skills. It's very easy to look at people who are very technically proficient, but when it comes to presenting or speaking to clients, tend to freeze up because there's no training on that sort of front, but we had loads of this stuff.
It was also nice having a diverse group coaching in the core team as well. I must have been taught by 20 different core team consultants. The core team consultants would only fill in for a lesson or two, maybe it would only be an hour at a time but it was great seeing how different people tackled those tasks as well. It means I saw so much more of a breath of how someone would approach the situation. Not one answer is always the correct thing and I think with consulting that's okay. My training was all very positive.
Q: How did your placements at The Data School enhance your skills and knowledge?
My first placement was at PwC, my second placement I was at Credit Suisses, and then my 3rd and 4th placements I was at IAG Loyalty. At PwC I was working with the Data Academy, so it was primarily teaching a sort of day-one boot camp for Alteryx, Tableau and Power BI. When I got there I thought Power BI was not something I'd ever really learned; I think we’d had a half day of training, just to give us an idea of what another data tool looks like. So it was a daunting prospect; it was my first placement on my first real job.
However, I think you realize the quality that The Data School teaches us. I was consulting at a company where everyone I was teaching was more senior and everyone at PwC had been there for at least three or four years - some people were 20 to 30 years into their jobs. I was still able to teach them principles and fundamentals that they didn't know about such as data governance or how to use tools. I was able to interact with people who were fundamentally more senior than me, but I needed to speak to them in an approachable sort of way, which was an interesting challenge.
I probably wouldn't be doing a job like that now that I've had two or three years of industry experience, but at the time it was the best way for me to go and begin learning what it was like doing day-to-day work with clients. I also had the opportunity to do interesting projects: I got to spend a decent chunk of time using PwC’s internal processes. They have a lot of data they host on things like Azure, which I’d never worked with, and got to work with some really senior people there as well. The guy who heads up their Alteryx Community initiatives was really receptive and loves The Data School. He was more than happy to speak to us and give us projects and things to work on. The experience gave me some really good time for personal development.
People at The Information Lab aren't afraid to say “look, if you've got spare time during the day, continue to professional development yourself”, and do things like take your Alteryx Advanced certification exam or go and learn SQL. I went and did all those things which was great considering where I ended up going in hindsight for my second, third and fourth placements. It was so useful that I spent that time doing some of those things as well as a bit of personal development.
My second placement was a bit more of a ramp-up. I was at Credit Suisse. I think they had a bit of a reputation for being one of those placements where you would be working on some stuff that you have no familiarity with, so I was suddenly looking into the world of very advanced SQL scripts, writing and dropping views and tables, and creating these big flows. We were even using things like IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), so documenting and ontology and stuff like this which would never be in the scope of what we learned in four months.
It was a tough but brilliant way to learn on a six-month placement and I was there with some other talented Data School consultants. I had people like Angelos (now on The Information Lab’s sales team) who's an absolute Alteryx wizard. I had Luke who’s on the senior core team and George who are super smart guys. There were so many really great people to have around me during that placement.
If I had been on my own, it would have been quite a daunting experience but having a lot of other Data School consultants around me and the support from The Information Lab, I was never afraid to ask questions. I had mentors and tutors that I could go to for advice. Ask them “How would you approach this problem?” The placement was tricky, but it was all stuff that I'm definitely better off having learned. It’s what a person has to go through I think fundamentally to improve as a consultant.
For my third and fourth placement, I was at IAG Loyalty, who are essentially a big airline company. They operate Avios points and things like that as well. And again, it was something that I sort of had no prior experience doing. It was a lot of SQL stuff because of my prior placement and we were doing a Snowflake migration. We are trying to move all of their data from an existing legacy database to Snowflake which again I had no Snowflake experience. I could write SQL but I hadn't been doing a ton of it. It was kind of you to go in here and lead a bit more of this from the Tableau side of things.
This is probably the first placement where I was given quite a lot of autonomy in terms of what we did in Tableau. Previously I've been part of bigger teams where we've been delegated work all the time. This is more a case of can you go and find things that we want to improve. Occasionally I’d be asked what I think of things because I am the authority on this. I think that's such a rare position to be in after only a year of work. I was 22-23 years old at this point and I was consulting for people far more senior than me in these companies. I tell people “these are the ways you should be doing these practices, this is what needs to change, these are the things we are not doing well at the moment.”
I found that tricky to begin with but given where their project was going, if I hadn't done anything it would have been an absolute mess. I was there for a year because it was such a sort of labor intensive thing that we were struggling to do. I still won't say it was the smoothest project but again, it was a nice dose of stakeholder management and working out how to reprioritize what we were doing on a weekly basis.
This placement was the first time I was really sort of isolated as a Data School consultant. It was the first time I wasn't on a team with another consultant. That was a nice experience as well because before you end up going out into the wider world post The Data School, I saw what it was like to be the sole consultant.
I always have had different challenges, whether it be things like performance optimization or is there a faster and more efficient way for you to support data sources across or how to get around things like awkward SQL queries that didn't work in Tableau. If I ever had issues, whether that be actual technical stuff or stakeholder management, having things like Convo (editor’s note: Convo is The Information Lab & Data School’s internal communication platform) and being able to speak to people, even going into the office and be able to tap a person next to me on the shoulder and say “got any idea what you're doing in this situation?” or “how would you solve this problem?” was the way I got through the entirety of The Data School.
After The Data School
Q: How did The Data School and The Information Lab serve as a launchpad for your data analytics career?
I have ended up working for Close Brothers who, when I was in training in The Data School and on placements, was a client of The Information Lab. I know at least a couple of people had been placed there and they were the people I asked about the company culture.
I think having the Information Lab on your CV is such a big boost because the companies that know about it understand the quality of the consultant. They know who’s gone through the program. So there's almost the name attached to it about The Information Lab. I think they also get a general safety net, knowing that there's a general standard in quality that they've come to expect from The Data School which is reassuring.
I've been here six months now and they said there was quite a clear distinction versus other candidates. I ended up interviewing against a couple of my cohort colleagues for a few different roles, including Close Brothers. They had us (candidates from The Data School) in a separate group of interviewees because they knew when they were looking for Tableau and Alteryx skills, they couldn’t do better than The Data School.
I now work in a relatively small data science team in Close Brothers. We're a bank, but you won’t see many branches of Close Brothers around. We offer a lot of stuff both in the commercial and the personal sectors, a lot of insurance-based stuff. My title is Data Visualization Analyst, but I do a lot of Alteryx & SQL backend stuff as well. Given that my team is so small we sort of have very specialized roles. I work with one data scientist who does a lot of Python and then my manager who delegates our priorities.
My job experience at The Information Lab and after are still very positive. I managed to get into a job pretty much instantly. I think I started the week after I left The Information Lab, so I had a weekend off then went straight into my role at Close Brothers. And I've been here for about six months and everything's been great so far. I've been able to offer a significant amount of value even though I've only been here for such a short period of time. It’s really reassuring. I think there's a lot of stuff that I'm not only working on already that's really interesting and scope for me to grow a little bit more that's really intriguing as well.
I think had I joined the same position having been just a regular data analyst somewhere I wouldn't necessarily have the opportunities because I'd be limited by my own abilities. But having had four placements and seeing so many different things, you get a bit more of a gauge of how these companies work. And I'd already worked for a bank as well. I had a bit more of an idea of what the financial industry looked like. So yeah, everything's been really positive to be honest.
I still have quite a close relationship with The Information Lab. Chris Love is the account manager for Close Brothers with The Information Lab so Chris and I have spoken pretty much every month ever since I've started. It's still quite a close connection with The Information Lab.
It's been nice that I have been appreciated from the start as well, which I think had I come from anywhere else with no name attached they'd be hard-pressed to have that trust in me straight away. They let me do stuff on an autonomous basis. I have had a degree of creative freedom in a lot of respects and also just that my voice is heard which I think in a lot of places that's not necessarily the case. You are sometimes just a cog in the machine.
Advice About The Data School
Q: What advice would you give to individuals considering applying to The Data School?
I would always say one thing for people applying - stick with it. I failed to get into The Data School on my first application. I sent in one of the worst looking dashboards I think I've ever seen. It's still my Tableau Public somewhere as a reminder (editor’s note: Harry’s first application). It wasn't a case of getting disheartened but it was more a case of you can do better than that which I think was a big thing in terms of me reapplying.
There's always things to improve, there's always different aspects you can look at. You almost want to try and break down your own work and see what's going on. I think that that comes into a big part of it as well as knowing how to critique your own stuff in a way. It doesn't make you feel negative about it but it gives you an opportunity to actually go and improve it a little bit more as well.
I think if you're sort of in the industry as well, the whole thing is really trying to keep learning as much as possible. I think that was what I did throughout my placements as well as having a conscious idea of other areas I want to go into and what stuff I can improve on or explore more. I recently started trying to do things like learning a bit of Python, for example, or getting my hands back into sort of the data science side of things as well because I know it might be useful in the future. I think it's having as many strings to your bow sort of thing. I know I can help with Tableau but I can help with SQL. Having all of those options really is what makes you not only valuable but also gives you some room to be able to do so many more different things.