Meet Luke and Nick who both joined our Data & Analytics Graduate programme last year. Hear how they’ve benefitted from our graduate programme so far:
What do you enjoy most about your role and the company?
Nick - Flexibility is the biggest positive with regards to my role. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to work with and learn from various different teams across departments – not many others within the company are so lucky. What I like most about Hastings is the emphasis on self-development. We are given the resources and time every week to focus on our technical and personal development.
Luke - Hastings has given me an environment in which I can develop the skills I brought from my degree so that they can be used in my current work. They encourage learning and development throughout the week, which is something I thoroughly enjoy! A worry I had coming into a full-time position is that my studying would not be put to use, but Hastings have proven me that it’s an essential piece of my profile.
What are you working on at the moment?
Luke - My current project is building a ‘feeder’ model to help calculate the price of a car insurance quote. We have a huge amount of data, which we can pass through multiple different functions to help decide on an efficient number of them to give us an accurate result with the best possible speed. I worked on the majority of this project alongside a more seasoned co-worker, but I am finishing it off myself and will shortly be progressing into developing my own model independently.
Nick - I’m currently working in the Underwriting department. There are many teams within this, but as a whole we build predictive pricing models.
How has being part of the Data and Analytics team stretched you professionally?
Nick - I’ve had to improve my technical skills at a rapid pace in order to hit the ground running with my projects. There has also many different tools to learn in a short space of time. However, everyone has been very supportive in helping me get up to speed and I feel I’ve already significantly developed these skills.
Luke - Being my first full-time role with no prior placements, almost everything has been a new experience for me! Luckily, everybody from my manger to the other graduates (even those in different departments) has been incredibly accommodating and has offered my help and advice from the start. The key thing that has changed since university has been my presentation skills – it’s very different giving a talk about a professional topic with important figures than it is explaining a topic to one of your professors.
What do you find most exciting about Data and Analytics?
Nick – I find the capacity for growth to be the most exciting thing about Data and Analytics. There are so many ideas within the department on how to improve current processes and expand into new areas. The team is also constantly expanding. These are indicative of how important Data and Analytics is for the future growth of the company and I’m excited to be a part of it.
Luke - Although you are on a project, and you frequently meet and talk to somebody who oversees your work, you are given a lot of flexibility in how you approach problems and how you could potentially solve them. What this means is that each project you work on really feels like it’s yours, and these personal touches help you as a data scientist want to improve and better your work.
Join us: Our Early Careers programmes are open from 6th February to 5th March 2023. Read more about our Data & Analytics Graduate Programme and see how to apply.