24 Years Late to Data, or Time Well Spent? | by Rachel Wooldridge

The year I turned 40, I did a major career swerve getting a full-time data job and starting a degree through an apprenticeship. Was this a classic mid-life crisis, or had I wasted the last 22 years on a different career path? Would I get bored of data all day every day?! I was a dab hand at changing jobs and I had come to enjoy working with data through a very varied career but was that enough?

My career path

I started working at 18 during a gap year, before going on to start a degree in Teaching with Art Specialism and ending up with a Ceramics and Glass Design degree, after realising I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a teacher after all!

Over the next (many) years I...

• worked as a community development worker, mentor and assessor, project lead and regional manager,
• managed nurseries, family support teams, Children’s Centres, community projects and a resilience-building programme for children and young people. 

I also gained a few more related qualifications along the way and started a lifecasting business (picture below in case you are typing “lifecasting” into a search engine!). I think my mum was horrified (she’s worked for the same boss for the last 45 years!), why couldn’t I just stay in one stable job?!

I wondered that too sometimes! I think there is a lot to be said about staying in one role for many years. I can see how you would have the confidence of knowing you are an expert in that role, perhaps avoiding the imposter syndrome that a lot of people I know struggle with.

Then at the age of 40, with 2 kids and a mortgage under my belt, I finally started my career in data.

Except that’s not entirely true. I had loved and worked with data for a while.

Building skills

The main themes for nearly my whole career (other than changing jobs a lot!) were working for charities and with diverse groups of people. In charities, there is always an element of reporting what you are doing and the impact you are having. This requires monitoring data and coming up with systems and processes to capture that data, store, track and report it. I had built Excel sheets and Access databases all thanks to YouTube and Google. I consulted with colleagues, funders, and service users about what they wanted and needed to know. 

I was building obvious data skills but also other skills that weren’t so clearly related to data.  I developed  my skills in communicating with people at different levels and from all walks of life, from formally presenting reports to our funders, to supporting asylum seekers who didn’t speak English. Now, I find that these communication skills are vital to liaising with and training a variety of stakeholders.

I learned to be agile when working with children and to constantly adapt to meet the needs of different ages and learning stages. In family support, no two families are ever the same, so neither are their support needs. I had to listen carefully to understand what they wanted and needed before coming up with a plan. In my data role this ability to adapt helps me keep up with our changing programmes and make changes to existing systems that make them more efficient. While I also listen carefully to what Stakeholders want and need. 

Finally, that creative side of me, combined with the fact that charities never have enough money to do the work that is required, helped me to think outside the box and come up with creative (and cost-effective) solutions that worked. I’m using this skill in my current role to think outside the box to come up with data solutions for our bespoke programmes and activities.

Of course, I’m still working for a charity, so my knowledge of charity data and funder requirements helps me to understand what we need and then suggest data and analysis techniques that can help evidence our impact. And almost 3 years in I’m not bored! Like my other roles over the years, no two days are ever the same, the data sector is vast and I am exploring everything from data strategy and governance to machine learning and visualising data.

I wasn’t late to a data career; I think I arrived at just the right time. 

Rachel Wooldridge is an Advanced Data Fellowship apprentice at Multiverse based in Birmingham, UK and is writing for the Apprentice Lens. Here’s more about her:

'I'm Rachel, Data Manager at Food for Life which is part of the Soil Association. I'm new to data as a full-time career and want to try blogging as a way of sharing my data journey experiences as well as building some new skills. When I'm not buried in PowerBi or getting excited about Power Automate I  am happiest being creative... usually getting messy and creating something far bigger than I planned!'