Health & Work life balance

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Meet Omar who started on our Analysts Graduate Programme in February 2020. Here he tells us about his journey so far and his hopes for the future at Admiral.  What were you looking for during your job search? I studied Natural Sciences at university, and despite focusing on life sciences for the bulk of my degree. I found myself enjoying my maths and computing modules the most and so I decided I wanted to focus on that after uni. Why did you choose the Data Analyst Grad Programme? I found that Admiral were one of the only places offering a dedicated analyst grad programme which was accessible to someone with my background (having not studied Maths, Physics, Computer Science etc.) Being able to dive straight into what I was interested in was a big pull for me.   How did you find the recruitment process? It sounds very cliché, but I really enjoyed the recruitment process. The written application was longer than what I was expecting and used to, but that was in place of any psychometric testing, so as a result I was able to send off my application, confident that it was an actual representation of who I was! Similarly, during both my interviews, I felt like the interviewers were interested in me as a person more so over any qualifications or specific knowledge. They weren’t trying to catch me out at all, so I felt comfortable to speak honestly during questions, openly saying when I didn’t know or couldn’t figure out what was being asked. What does your day-to-day at Admiral look like? I’m going into my penultimate month in my placement now with Acquisitions MI, one of the main data providing departments. Our main reporting tools here are SQL, Excel, VBA, and MicroStrategy and throughout the placement I’ve had a chance to learn all of them. Now I have a lot of flexibility in picking up jobs which focus on what I want to develop further. One thing that really surprised me about Data Analysis is the element of design that came with it. I honestly thought that the roles would be exclusively processing numbers (which there definitely is!) but a big aspect of my role is thinking about how the data is presented. I’m not much of an artist, and I found this hard at the start, but now I sometimes find myself doodling little sketches of dashboards or brainstorming potential design ideas. I like to break up the day with little pockets of doing something different when I can, usually it’s reading whatever book I’ve got from the Buy a Book Scheme during lunch, or sometimes a bit more of a structured training put on by the Admiral Academy or my department. What skills have you found most useful at Admiral? Communication! I’ve found it really important to be quick and transparent with your communication. If your work is going to take a week or two longer for example, a quick email explaining the situation goes a long way! I’ve never been met with anything but appreciation for the honesty.  Do you see yourself working for Admiral long-term? Absolutely! One thing that excites me the most about talking to more senior members of the company is the variety of the careers they’ve built. I’m looking forward to building my journey here. What would you say to someone sceptical of working for an insurance company? When I first joined Admiral, I had a very rudimentary understanding of what an insurance company actually does; but very quickly I began to learn about the differing roles in the company and how it all fits together. One of the most exciting things for me about the grad programme is the fact we take placements in 3-4 very different roles and get to spend a lot of time getting to grips with each one to find a niche that we enjoy and are interested in. Is there anything you would recommend to someone applying for the data analyst grad programme? When I first applied to the programme, I was apprehensive about the size of Admiral and worried that my work wouldn’t contribute much to the company. It quickly became apparent that this wasn’t the case, almost immediately after I joined my department I was able to start having a meaningful impact to work we do here and quickly built up a relatively high experience in some of the software we use. Now I’d say that the size of the company is a huge factor in the enjoyment I get from the work I do, giving you access to data and the ability to find trends and insights you probably wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere.