What's your job about?
I am working for membership GSA (Growth, Strategy & Analytics). Our team is responsible for maintaining RACV's data repository, which is usedby the business for reporting and analysis, as well as developing reporting suites to enable fact-driven decision making. Other functions include strategic insight and data model development to lift business performance, data governance and quality coordination, and 1:1 marketing campaign delivery.
I am working as a data analyst, in my first rotation, I worked in BI&R(Business Intelligent & Reporting) team and now I am working in DGQ (Data Governor and Quality) team. In BI&R, the main responsibility is to take care of Tableau users and try to create RACV Tableau Community. As Tableau admin, I took care of content stale and user access. In report building, I optimised the MIST monthly report; migrated MIST charts, and tables from Excel to Tableau, also streamlined them into one workbook. The project I got involved in was Tableau online migration from the tableau server, which was a big change for the whole organization. Before Tableau online migration, I helped to clean up contents, afterwards, I helped to group Tableau users.
Now in the DGQ team, learning all about Collibra, data governance and getting involved in member stabilization projects.
What's your background?
I was born and grew up in China. I completed my bachelor’s degree in Chemical Material Engineering in China and worked for 3 years in a laboratory as a chemical engineer.
One day when I was waiting for a test to be complete, I started to ask myself am I happy to stay with chemicals in my whole life. Clearly, there was a voice in my mind that said no, so I took one year off and travelled all around the world like a backpacker. After I finished my gap year, I became an international student at the University of Tasmania majoring in Information and Systems.
I applied directly to RACV’s graduate program in January 2022 through Seek. I went through two separate interview stages. The first one was interviewed with my first rotation manager and a senior manager. The interview was very relaxed and wasn’t at all like anything I had expected – no technical questions at all. They just wanted to get to know me, and before I knew it, we were joking around and talking about our hobbies and commonalities. The second interview was with two senior managers in my division. A tip I like to tell people is that if you get this far, they already want to hire you. They just need to make sure they’ll get along with you, as they need to work with you every day! So just be yourself.
One day later, I received a very happy phone call to let me know that I’d made a great impression and they’d be very excited to welcome me to the team. So, I have been working in GSA since January – more than 4 months until now.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes !!! Data analysis does not require a data background, my master’s degree was in Information systems and my bachelor's was in Chemical Material Engineering. Neither of them is related to data.
I do not think this role requires specific characteristics or skills as other graduate roles, the willingness to learn is the most important. RACV offers full opportunities for the graduate trainees to learn, and my whole team, regardless of level, is incredibly supportive of professional development in terms of ability to deliver, but also in coaching me on how to be a professional.
For Technical skills to be a data analyst. The basics of SQL, for instance, can take as little as two to three weeks for a beginner to pick up. To learn Tableau will likely need closer to three weeks of full-time study. Programming languages are a bit more complex. Someone with a good grasp of programming fundamentals can usually pick up the basics of Python in about eight weeks.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The best part about working with data is seeing the impact it can have on an organization. The task I enjoyed most was building a Tableau dashboard for an enterprise report. It was a very time-consuming task, but I learnt a lot through doing this task, for example understanding different datasets, communicating with different stakeholders etc.
Most of my days are spent parsing through numbers and datasets: a lot of the time spent on Data Analytics is spent understanding and transforming data. It's not the most interesting part, but it's incredibly important. The fun part is designing Data Visualizations that communicate the insight I have uncovered.
What are the limitations of your job?
I would say ‘Yes’, there are lots of responsibilities at my work. As a data analyst, the most important thing is to make sure the data that I presented is reliable and accurate. However, there is nothing that needs to be worried about as I always get my whole team on my back.
I do not need to work on weekends in my role, and the role is not physically demanding.
There are two limitations to becoming a data analyst in my opinion. Firstly, enjoying working with numbers is the most important thing to become a data analyst. If your first instinct is to run for the hills when presented with a spreadsheet, a career in data analytics might not be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re not afraid to get to grips with complex analysis, you’re right to be considering a future as a data analyst. Secondly, an analytical mindset and a logical approach to work. If you’re an analytical thinker, you’re more likely to draw conclusions based on facts and data as opposed to gut feeling or intuition. But if you are a person who easily draws a conclusion based on your assumptions, data analysis is not a perfect career for you.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...