As I mentioned in the first post, my journey to becoming a software developer started officially last Monday the 4th of March, on a cold day in London. I had done some work to get to this point of course, the interview process to get into Makers Academy included around 30 hours of coding pre-work, however I did this back in July last year, and have not coded since, so for me this was a fresh start.
I wanted to provide some information about me however, my experiences leading up to this point. I never would have considered an apprenticeship before, but now I know they are open to everyone, people from all backgrounds take on apprenticeships in careers completely different to theres, and I hope my story can help someone else make the leap to a new career too.
Before starting on this apprenticeship, I had done many different jobs, all for Tesco. I have been there since I was 16, and I will be reaching my eighth year there this year. I started working part time there during sixth form as a way to make some money so I could enjoy myself. Both my parents had worked for Tesco previously, so Tesco was always my first choice anyway. Once I started my part time work, I realised that I enjoyed working so much more than I enjoyed going to school, and the ratio between the two swayed further and further towards work. I finished my exams, and before I’d even received my results, I had interviewed for, been offered and started a job in Tesco Head Office. I had just applied for anything, I didn’t care what it was, I knew I would be able to adapt and perform in any role, I just wanted to start a full time job at Tesco.
Luckily for me the job I got was as a Trainee Buyer for Central Europe on the Electrical department. Being that I have always been interested in technology, this was perfect for me. I really enjoyed my time there, I learned lots of new skills and met some great people. I also got to work with suppliers from the huge global brands as well as smaller brands located just in one of the European countries we operated in. That role really helped me grow, previously I was always very shy and kept to myself, but after I started I was having to deal with suppliers daily, and the conversations were not always easy. This helped build my confidence and resilience. After about a year and half, I felt I had grown all I could in the trainee role that I was in, and started enquiring into Assistant level roles, a step up from where I was. As there was none available in the CE department, I started looking into the UK department. I told the buying manager at the time my plans and he understood, however he really wanted to keep me on the team, so he offered me a role as an Assistant Merchandiser instead. This would still be a step up for me, but in a completely different role, managing the stock and pricing rather than products themselves. I have never been afraid of a challenge, so despite the fact I knew nothing about merchandising, and would be going in at assistant level, I accepted straight away.
My time as a Merchandiser for CE Electrical was unfortunately short, but very rewarding. I picked it up quickly, many of the skills I had learned were transferable, and my natural ability with numbers and using software like excel really helped. I developed fast in this role, eventually being given responsibility over an area of Electrical all on my own as well as doing my merchandising role. It was only a small area, Printers, but it has given me some of my proudest work achievements to date. I was given full control, buying and merchandising, I chose the range of printers, how much stock to buy, when to promote it, how much to send to each store, how many stores, everything was down to me, and I loved it. Being able to see my range on shelves and selling filled me with pride. When I took over the Printer area, availability was at around 75%. By the time I left, I had got availability up to 99.7%, across the two thousand stores we had in the 4 European countries. I still have a printout of that availability report at home. Unfortunately for me, the business decided to move responsibility for the Central European ranges back to their respective countries, and our roles were no longer necessary. I was offered a similar role in the UK business, but decided I fancied a new challenge.
I applied for a role in F&F, the Tesco clothing brand, as an Assistant Merchandiser. The job description didn’t mention what team I would be on, but I felt like no matter where I went it would be interesting. I was accepted and given my start date, and told I would be on the women’s lingerie team. Not my area of expertise but I was happy nonetheless. I did receive a few looks and jokes from my family while trying to research our range and competitors though. About a week before my start date, I was told that I would actually be on the Kids Footwear and Accessories team instead now, and being 20 and single this was another area I had no experience in, but again I was more than happy to give it my best. I ended up staying in F&F on the Kids F&A team for the next 2 years.
I picked up the role quickly, there were many similar elements, but also much that was completely different. We were planning ahead 3 seasons in F&F, where we would have bought stock maybe a month in advance in Electrical. Our profit margin on Electrical goods was practically non-existent, whereas in clothing, everything makes profit, as the scale of material purchased allows for lots of savings. My excel skills by this point were very good, higher than most other people in the commercial areas, as usually there wasn’t much need to know more than a basic vlookup. I used this skills to automate a lot of the processes the team were using after I started, the best of which was a sheet I created to help with sales forecasting. Before I started, Fridays for the Footwear and Accessories teams were completely taken up by the Friday Forecast. The teams would have to produce sales figures from the week, and a forecast for the weekend, highlighting any high performers or issues, to be sent on to the heads of the department. This would take all day, and would put the whole team out of action. When I started I decided this was too much work, so I created a spreadsheet which would do all the work for you. You could set your sales parameters for each day, either at a top level, area level (e.g. umbrellas) or down to a line level and it would forecast the sales for you. It would then sum it all up, give you a breakdown of the best lines, best areas, performance vs last week, everything you could need, and put it into an email ready to send. The process was reduced to about 30 minutes. I received the Footwear and Accessories equivalent to employee of the month for this, in my third month on the team. Another of my proudest achievements. Over the 2 years I produced many different spreadsheets to help the teams out. I was even fairly good at predicting which of our shoes would sell the best, as I got more in tune with kids fashion, although I could never tell the school shoes apart. 5 different black leather shoes that all looked the same to me, I relied on the buyers for those!
After the 2 years, in which I had been given responsibility over the Back to School range, back to school being our biggest sales period of the year, I decided that I wanted to change what I was doing. As fun and great as F&F was, there was little opportunity to move on and be promoted. Around this time someone I had worked with previously called me and told me about a job that was going in the team she now worked in. The job title was Quality and Data Executive for the Apprenticeship and Graduate team, a very fancy title which gave me little information about the job, but I agreed to interview for it anyway. The job was to look after the newly introduce Apprenticeship Levy fund which would be used to fund apprenticeships at Tesco. It sounded like a challenge, something new, so I accepted.
The first thing I had to do was learn what the Apprenticeship Levy actually was. It’s a 0.5% tax on the companies wage bill, which is then put into an account which we can access to fund the training of apprentices. Tesco being as huge as it is, we had one of the biggest levy’s in the country. I had to learn all of the rules of using the apprenticeship levy which, as they came from the government, were not short or easy to understand. But I became fairly well versed in them quickly, being able to answer any questions people in the business had about it. The first apprenticeship we launched was huge, over 2000 applications received and 1500 people starting, which was fairly unheard of at the time. Trying to track the data for the apprentices was not easy, I used my excel skills to create a spreadsheet to make it easier. I also created one to forecast levy money in vs money spent each month, which ended up evolving into a huge spreadsheet as the rules kept changing and the levy evolving. The sheets were used all through my time there and are in still in use now. I had to deal with training providers on a daily basis to ensure we had the right data regarding apprentices progress and anything else we needed. We also ran several events for our apprentices, the organising and running of which have given me some of my favourite memories of recent years. My time in this role really helped me understand that apprenticeships were for everyone, no matter how old you are or where you were in your career. I have heard some really inspiring stories from so many people, where apprenticeships have really changed their lives for the better. This is what encouraged me to pursue a change in my own career. I applied for an apprenticeship with Makers Academy in July last year. I was accepted onto the apprenticeship and was fully ready for a career change.
Until Tesco started offering the L4 Software Developer apprenticeship themselves, working with Makers Academy as the training provider. To me it seemed like a no brainer. I spoke with the people in charge of the apprenticeship and asked if I could join the programme as Makers had already accepted me. The answer was basically no, I would still have to interview, but at least I didn’t have to re-complete the 30 hours of pre-work again! I was accepted in November, and the 4 month wait to start began.
Which brings me back to last week! I am here now and absolutely loving it. This is definitely one of the best choices I have ever made, and I am really looking forward to a long career in an area I am actually interested in.
I am very grateful to Tesco for all the opportunities they have given me over the years, I hope I can repay them with some quality work as a Software Developer.
Thank you for reading, well done if you read it all, it was not meant to be an essay but the words just kept coming!
Josh
Josh's Blog 