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My name’s Tony.

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I work for Castle Donington M&S,

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and my role is a data analyst.

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Part of our role is to give insights

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across the network, look at the transactional data,

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monitor performance from an automation

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point of view and a colleague point of view.

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Basically, performance metrics of both

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colleagues, machinery, and flow of stock.

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So the skills that are very useful for in our job

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is being able to have good written skills.

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We do a lot of calculations within SQL code.

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To have that high knowledge

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of maths is very, very useful.

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GCSEs-wise, I didn’t do as well as I wanted to do.

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I did enough to get myself

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onto my college course to do my sports.

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When I left school my goal

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was to become a football coach.

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And then I needed something that was a little

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bit more permanent within work, so I came to M&S

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and started as a warehouse operative trainer.

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When I came to M&S, they did support my

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coaching with Nottingham University,

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so I was able to do dual jobs.

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But then I opted to drop the university,

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and then I ended up moving into

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D&D, which is like our project teams,

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looking at data regarding the automation,

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started to really get a good understanding

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of that type of world, and then pushed to

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become an analyst within M&S, which I am now.

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The first time the role came up and I applied,

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I was unsuccessful, but I received feedback

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from my interview and what I needed to focus on.

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I applied again a couple of months

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later when the job come up

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to again experience another knockback.

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I applied for a similar role after completing

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my courses and I received a third knockback.

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Took the feedback on board again,

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and then I heard about the

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M&S Data Fellowship Programme, which I went onto.

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A role opened up whilst I was on the programme

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which I was put on a secondment.

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After completing the course and

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getting my level 3 in data and analytics,

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my secondment come to an end.

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A position had opened up within that team, which I

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then was interviewed for and was then successful.

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I suppose my advice would be to anyone

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that’s interested in data is there are

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online courses that you can do,

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which you can learn various types of coding language.