Career Advice

I’m not always great at taking advice. My conscious brain seems to reject it at the time it is given – responding with an argument as to “why it won’t work”. My sub-conscious seems to be a lot better at processing the advice. Often after a few hours (or days if my kids have been depriving me of sleep!), I will realise that the advice will help and I incorporate it into whatever solution I decide to go with to my problem.

When Gethin Ellis invited me to post about the best career advice I’d ever received as part of T-SQL Tuesday, I thought it was a good opportunity to reflect on this trait and consider whether I’ve improved this aspect of myself over the years.

My early career

My career path has been very untraditional. I’ve found my niche now – working in the Microsoft Analytics area – specifically as a Power BI Consultant and Trainer (and perhaps a Fabric Consultant and Trainer as I grow into the new capabilities in the private preview).

Choosing my University course was extremely difficult. I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do. I remember the thinking at the time – “I have no idea what to choose, so I may as well choose something which will pay well”. Maybe this was a reaction to my £2.79 per hour starting wage at a supermarket! My choice was Accounting and Economics, and it came to define my “first career”.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (one of the world’s largest accounting and consulting firms) ran a series of guest lectures and this led me to apply for their summer vacation scheme. Good performance in the scheme led to an offer to join the firm after graduation and I felt very pleased and excited.

Reality then set in… I graduated, started at PwC and found myself back in lectures, learning intensively for very tough ICAEW (accounting) exams, whilst also working in a competitive environment. I’d worked from 16 to 21 at a supermarket, taking every shift I could through the holidays. It was a shock to be back studying so soon (even though I had known it was coming) and I think I was quickly burnt out.

I managed to get through the accounting exams and remain to this day a qualified accountant. I don’t regret it – the ACA qualification is a fantastic general business qualification, and I spent time in 50+ businesses, understanding how they worked, their strategy, what made them successful, what caused them issues, etc.

However, I never had a passion for it. I loved the teamwork, I loved meeting people at clients, but I got up each day counting the days to the weekend. I heard the old adage that “if you do something you love, then you’ll never work”, but I dismissed it as for people in “fun careers”.

Change of direction

I left PwC in 2004 to join Vodafone. I joined Vodafone in another Finance role initially. It is here that I received the first piece of career advice which changed my direction. My Vodafone hiring manager had assigned my responsibilities to another employee because he couldn’t wait the full 3 months for me to start. He asked me instead to take on an IT role managing a finance system implementation. This was a big shock at the time and I felt really let down.

The system implementation work was owned at the time by an EY manager called Craig Light. Craig saw my anxiety at being pushed into a role I didn’t want and didn’t feel qualified for. He observed me for a while and he saw something in me that I didn’t see at the time. I have always been obsessed with technology. My parents were unusually interested in computers for the time period (the 80s). We had computers in the house from 1985 onward and I learned to persevere and work around problems (mainly so I could get my games to work!). I’ve always had a long term vision of how technology will change the world. I remember telling my friends in the mid-90s that cars will eventually drive themselves, and traffic problems will disappear – because computers won’t slam the brakes on unpredictably and cause tailbacks!

Craig got to know me and realised that my interest in tech would link really well into the role. He advised me to take it slow, learn each aspect of the role and sort them into things I enjoyed and things I didn’t.

I was polite, but internally I immediately put all the aspects of the role into the “not enjoyable” bucket. Clearly in 2005, I hadn’t progressed too far with my advice rejection issue! However, my subconscious intervened and gradually, more and more of the role moved into the enjoyable bucket. I learned how to build workflows in java, how to develop reports in Cognos and how to gather and formulate requirements for a developer to deliver a quality solution the first time. I learned how to plan and carry out testing, how to version control and how to plan releases. I was working 12 hour days at times – not because of a high workload, but because I was enjoying myself! At work!

This enjoyment closely correlated to success. I was seen as one of the leading “implentors” of the software. I spoke about our implementation in Boston to 300 people at the age of 25. I was trusted to meet the Group CFO of Vodafone (an inspirational man called Andy Halford) and show him our implementation before asking him to sign off… it was an exciting time. I was given the highest performance ratings for the first time in my career.

I’ve never really looked back. I moved into a large programme at Vodafone to implement SAP globally to over 100,000 users and focussed on master data management, data quality and ultimately became the data leader for the programme. I moved to a global influenza vaccine company (Seqirus) to be their data and analytics leader. I had a fantastic 4.5 years there starting the D&A team from scratch with great leaders supporting me – but in the end, this led to another change in direction.

One more direction change

Having been in relatively senior leadership roles in data since 2012, I realised that I was no longer close enough to the technical work that I love. I thrive on being an expert in what I do and helping others succeed and build their expertise. We started to implement Power BI at Seqirus and while we were establishing it, I had the chance to get my hands dirty again. I was the Power BI admin, I was building reports to try to get others excited. It became about 25% of my job and I realised that it was by far the most fun 25%!

So now Power BI is 100% of my job. I am an expert again. I am helping others resolve problems and I’m helping them build their expertise. I’m still strategic and long term when thinking about how Power BI needs to develop to best support a client. In short, I get to do what I love, and I enjoy the week days as much as I enjoy the weekend.

Craig’s advice (and patience) set me on this path and I will always be grateful.

Finally… have I improved in my ability to take advice? I would like to think the answer is yes. I have had fantastic advice about my Power BI career from people like Gethin (you may not remember, but you gave me good advice at Data Scotland!) and also my friend Asgeir Gunnarsson who is a constant support to me.

Maybe someone who knows me can comment on my ability to take advice now that I am older and wiser(?)…