Occupation

Service Analyst (IS Graduate Trainee)

Organisation

Standard Life

Could you give a brief  history of your career to date?

After school I went straight into studying a BSc (Hons) in Information Systems Management at Edinburgh Napier University. My first full time job in IT was part of the 1 years work experience I completed as part of my course. This provided me with valuable experience in a dynamic working environment as well as enabling me to apply the knowledge and skills I had gained from university so far.

The following summer I took on the opportunity for a Summer Internship at the Royal Bank of Scotland, doing application development - and while this was worthwhile it also helped me to decide that development was not a route I wanted to pursue as a future career.

I completed my degree in Jan 08 and began to apply for IS graduate training schemes. The opportunity arose for short term consultancy work at Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS which I felt was ideal for me at the time. I was able to be flexible and continue to attend assessment centres/interviews while working on redesigning the internal file structure and intranet site for the Dietetics Department.

Fortunately, I was successful in my application to Standard Life and was able to begin working here in May 08 as soon as the consultancy work was completed.

What made you get involved in this area of work/this career?

From my previous work experience and what I had studied at University, I was clear that I wanted to focus more on the business and customer facing side of IT rather than development. Unlike many other IS Graduate Schemes, Standard Life offered different roles within IS, either in Operations or Development and this appealed to me. I believe my interests came across to Standard Life as they matched me up to the Service Analyst role based on this.

What are you responsible for in your job and what do you like best about it?

As a Service Analyst, the team in which I work is responsible for ensuring continuity of service and that the core systems used by Standard Life Investments are available and operating at an acceptable level for the individuals using them. There are 5 key aspects within the role: incident management, problem management, change management, service improvement and work place recovery. At the moment I am primarily dealing with change management. The aim here is to ensure that any changes have little or no impact on business operations.

There is a lot of responsibility involved within change management and it does require a sound knowledge of the IT systems, or at least knowing where to find the information required so that a good assessment of the risk involved in a change can be judged. However, I quite enjoy this aspect of it as it means that I learn quite a lot and I like being able to interface with the business as well as with the various technical teams that specialise in their own areas.

What is a typical day like?

On a typical day, I would come in and run an up to date report on all the changes to affect Standard Life Investments over the following 2 weeks. I would then go through each change to understand what is involved and assess the risk of implementing the change over not implementing it. Sometimes this would require speaking to the people doing the change to get further information or organising any resources (e.g. testing) before the change can be approved. For larger scale changes, I will be involved during the planning stages to identify the business impact and ensure that the changes are communicated and planned for well in advance.
In the background, there will always be incidents which are being dealt with by the IT Support team. Where these incidents are more service impacting, I may get involved to identify whether the problem has been caused by a change which has been applied or communicating out to the business to keep them updated on the progress being made.

What is your working environment like?

Standard Life has a very open and friendly working environment and I feel that this is one of the key aspects that make the job more enjoyable. If there is anything that I am ever unsure of, people are always willing to help and point you in the right direction.

There is also a real focus on individuals and developing their strengths rather than concentrating on the weaknesses. That's not to say that the work is not challenging and you do have busy workloads at times, but it is also very rewarding and the effort put in is always recognised by management.

What challenges have you faced in your career and how have you overcome them?

One of the main challenges I faced was starting my role at Standard Life ahead of the graduate intake in September 08. This meant that I was hitting the ground running rather than being eased into the role. I found that it was a whole new environment to adapt to and trying to quickly build up a network of contacts was difficult. I overcame this just by trying to take in as much as possible and continuing to ask questions when I was unsure about something. I still often have to ask  - but I have now built up some knowledge of the structure of company and IS in particular to make me feel more comfortable.

There are also smaller challenges which are faced on a daily basis, and I was once faced with a critical incident only a couple of months into working with company where web browsing had gone down and this impacted on some of the critical systems used by our Central Dealing Desk to place trades. On this occasion I volunteered to work from another building so that I was kept updated on the progress being made by the technical teams and was then able to feed that back to the rest of my team who were communicating with the end users to establish how wide-scale the problem was.

Do you ever make mistakes? How do you deal with that?

Yes, there are times where a change which has been implemented which has a knock on effect to one of the production systems, meaning that people may not be able to log in to the application the next morning for example. The most important thing is for me to quickly be able to identify which change may have caused this issue. This means that the technical teams can focus on resolving the problem and have the system up and running again as soon as possible. The process and lessons learned can then be documented for reference when approving a similar change in future.

What is your greatest achievement?

I feel that one of my greatest achievements was when I graduated with a first in my degree with a class medal and also winning the CapGemini prize for my honours project work. It was at this point that the effort and time put in paid off.

What would be your ideal holiday?

My ideal holiday would be somewhere warm and relaxing where I could also soak in the local culture. I am not a big fan of busy cities with a lot of hustle and bustle. There are so many places that I would love to travel to that I could not just name one.

What is your favourite book / TV Programme?

My favourite TV programme at the moment is Heroes - it takes something very special to make me miss an episode!

What would you like to be doing in 5 years time?

That is a difficult question to answer as I feel that there is a lot of opportunities and scope within Standard Life, so it really depends on finding out what interests me personally. Generally I would like to have built up a good knowledge of the various IS areas as it is quite large and each team tends to specialise on their own functions. One area that I would like to gain some experience in is project management.

Is there any advice you would give students entering your career?

For students entering a career, I would just like to advise that you do find it is a lot to take on and it can be quite a steep learning curve initially. Despite the fact that you do have a wide knowledge from your studies, you shouldn't expect to know everything when you begin.

I think that one of the key skills you have to bring to any role is the ability to learn and pick things up quickly and employers find that very appealing as it means you can adapt to the job. Once comfortable in your role, it is then easier to bring your own flair and ideas.

What do you think could be done to encourage more women to enter your field?

Women should not feel intimidated just because they are in the minority, rather this should be seen as an opportunity. If you are going into a male dominated environment, you may actually find that they are more intimidated of you and the fact that you have technical knowledge. I believe the key is to try and dismiss any such gender differences - the more you focus on it, the more apparent it becomes