Our Leicester-based colleague Brij joined us in 2021, working in various call centre teams including New Business, Customer Service and Retentions.
After becoming interested in data, Brij sought out a role within the company and has recently progressed into the role of Data Engineer in Underwriting – a brilliant team of experts who work with data to help give our customers the best price.
Read Brij’s blog about his journey at Hastings so far.
How it all started
I have lived and grown up in Leicester my whole life. Throughout my time in education, I studied computer science, both inside and outside of the classroom. In total I have been learning about computer science and related fields for around five to six years, speaking with software engineers that I know, taking online courses, watching youtube videos and speaking to teachers about the topic.
Although I am currently working as a Data Engineer, this has only become a passion of mine relatively recently. In the past, I spent most my time at home learning about front and back-end web development. However around a year ago, I become very interested in data and learned as much as I could by myself at home. After learning about some of the cutting-edge technologies within this area, I knew that this was the career I wanted to pursue.
I started my time at Hastings in June 2021. I was working in the New Business department in the call centre, then subsequently moved to Customer Service and lastly Renewals.
After finding my new passion in data, I reached out to as many relevant colleagues as I could to learn more. I wanted to know what a data engineer actually does, what the importance of data was within our organisation, what a day-to-day schedule looks like, and what kind of opportunities there were for development.
A culture of growth and development
Hastings as a company promotes a culture of growth and development, and I quickly found out how true this was when I reached out to my data colleagues. Everyone I spoke to was willing to take time out of their busy schedules to talk to me about the role and answer some of the many questions I had floating around in my head.
I can’t have dreamed of a better outcome than being given the opportunity to jump into the role and further ignite my passion for data. I think that I am a great example of the opportunities available at Hastings. The current role I am working in is just one of many that I’ve held in my two years with Hastings, and I am sure it won’t be the last!
My favourite thing about Hastings
There are many things I enjoy about Hastings, but if I had to name one thing it would without question be the people. The reason that I say this is because not only are colleagues, of course, the driving force behind any business, but at Hastings there’s a lot of open interaction between different teams. I really enjoy the fact that I can reach out to seniors colleagues, colleagues from other teams and people I wouldn’t normally communicate with in my day-to-day role, and they are always more than willing to talk and have a chat.
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