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Graduate case studies

Graduate case studies
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Carter - 
Associate Analyst

Even though many of our graduates will have progressed in their careers since completing a case study, they are still of interest to students who wish to gain an understanding of the world of work.

About the job

Main responsibilities

I am responsible for optimising the acquisition of accounts in terms of spending month to month, and monitoring the metrics associated to this to make sure they hit the targets the directors set in place. This also includes answering any questions our brokers ask of us, and fixing any issues with invoices and daily reports we send them.

Typical day

From day to day, I am investigating new ways to optimise our purchasing strategies. I propose experiments and new ideas outside the box to directors, (Even the CEO) and implement them when they get the go ahead. I am present at biweekly analyst board meetings and catch up meetings with the CEO. Often I have to present to my manager and my department and often I am asked to do things on the fly by looking into data in a relational database using SQL. I also manage any automatically generated reports and create new ones when necessary.

What do I enjoy about my job?

Everyone at my work is very friendly and helpful, I have a good out of office life with the other graduates, and everyone at work is at a similar age range which makes communication easy.

There are also some perks to my place of work, such as free food and hot drinks, as well as a pool table and the occasional night out.

Challenging aspects

learning new things which are not strictly mathematical such an economic/financial information, as well as coding under a time constraint.

Why did this area of work appeal to me?

I wanted to work in either finance, or with software and this hits a sensible medium for me, it gives me a good idea of how marketing works and I get a boatload of data to play around with, while improving my logical skills with coding.

Skills/qualifications I use in my job?

Coding in SQL and C#, use of most microsoft office applications, data management, understanding of financial techniques and predictive modelling, along with logistic/linear regression.


Career information

Brief history since leaving University

I applied for this position while I was doing exams in my final year at university, and started in September 2018. Until then, I had no previous work after leaving university.

Where do I see myself in the future?

I'd like to move further into marketing data analysis and learn more programming languages such as Python and C#. I'd like to apply more forecasting techniques instead of using the ones available to me, and create models and ideas that will benefit my company financially.


Advice to students

My piece of advice to students

For those of you interested in pure mathematics but don't wish to take it further into academics, I'd highly recommend getting into coding, it is a great place to test your logical thinking skills, and nothing is more logical and pedantic than a computer.


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Last updated: 23 Feb 2019