Geolytix: The Apprentice Route

I’m sure all of the Data Analysts at Geolytix would agree that not only does every day vary but between us our roles also vary. This blog will hopefully give you a glimpse of a day in my life as a Data Analyst.

Differing slightly from the others, I joined via the apprenticeship route straight after finishing sixth form which means I started with no experience and close to no skills to be a Data Analyst, just an interest in Maths and Geography. It’s May 2022, which means it’s over a year since I finished my Data Analytics apprenticeship – I can’t believe how fast time is going!

Currently I switch between working from a box room in my family home and working from the office we have in Park Square, Leeds. Today a few of us were going into the office, so I began my day by travelling into Leeds City Centre.

My first task of the day was to start reviewing the older drawn retail parks within our Retail Places data set, as part of our annual update. This is a priority at the moment, to ensure the geometries are consistent for this type of Retail Place. This is more of a time-consuming manual task but it’s important that we are continually improving the data we sell.

Later that morning I attended our weekly Data Team meeting, where we have a few minutes each to tell everyone what we are working on this week, share any problems and talk about any other business. This helps to keep all team members in the loop and ensures we are communicating regularly when working from home.

Updating our UK Supermarket Retail Points dataset is on the schedule for this week too. So after lunch, I began extracting open data from the retailer websites to use for the update, which can be either manually or using python to scrape the store locators. I am definitely a beginner at using python but working alongside Alessandro gives me the opportunity to practice my python skills.

This then led me to the end of the day, when I had plans to meet my friend near the office for an overdue catch up over a drink.

Rebecca Mellor, Data Analyst at Geolytix

Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash