What made you decide to do your Masters?
In my role as an Executive Assistant, I managed a project to automate a resource planning system within my organisation. After deployment, we realized that some crucial steps were ignored which made us go back to the drawing board again. Apparently, the developers were having trouble understanding the business needs, whilst stakeholders felt developers were too slow in understanding the process. I needed a course that would aid me in being the intermediary between technical team and the stakeholders to explain and interpret to the different parties.
Did you attend an open evening/contact your programme lead in advance of your course?
I had contact with my programme lead prior to choosing my modules. It’s a really a good thing I did, because he asked what my plans were at the time, I explained that I would love to pursue a career path in Business Analysis and he advised me on the modules to choose from. I did choose them and had no regrets.
How do you feel your Masters prepared you for the career you have now?
I work as a Business Analyst in a tech company, where we constantly have to review the processes of organisations and come up with the best system they should adopt. In my Information Systems Engineering module, part of our course work was to review a company, to understand what they want to achieve, and then to lay out a plan for them. This is exactly what I now do in my current job - requirements gathering is the foundation of all our process here in my office.
Can you describe a moment that something clicked into place for you, or you thought - ‘I can do this’?
For my future career, I wanted to be able to explain data to stakeholders in a way that makes it easy for them to grasp my point. Using a Power Bi would help me present data in a more interesting way, so I knew it was important. At first, it seemed difficult and impossible. However, I kept on looking at the videos on my module page, and boom – I was able to do it.
What would you tell someone who was thinking about starting a Masters?
Ask yourself what you want to achieve, the career path you want to be on – look at courses and modules most importantly. Compare that with your chosen career path and run for it!