Doing an apprenticeship in your 30's

[Amplus]

Posted on here how I would like to do an analysis type job. Currently working earning mid 20k salary in an admin role. Been applying for Anaylst roles but as I only have advanced Excel experience not been getting an response.

Until I saw an advert with a big company in the Manchester area for an 18 month apprenticeship open to mature adults to do data analysis / business intelligence / data science where I will learn programs such as R, SQL, Qlikview, SAS, Tableau etc. Sounds a great opportunity and I've been offered an interbiew. However salary says 'competitve' so no idea how low it is. Not expecting anything close to what I'm on but due to the fact it requires A levels, is a big company and open to matures makes me think it should be above minimum wage.

Have a mortgage so anything under 18-20k might be a struggle but it does sound like a good opportunity to learn an in demand skill.

Should I ask salary before interview? Worth taking a big salary cut for this opportunity in my mid 30's?

 

[Amplus]

I don't see why not.



Maybe, maybe not.

Depends what your other options are, what your goals are etc...

I mean there are some apprenticeship degrees around these days too where you could get paid a similar amount and earn a degree at the same time. Do you currently have a degree?

There are evening or distance learning options you could pursue to get a degree.

There are plenty of online courses out there too if you don't want a degree/qualification per say but simply want to acquire some more useful skills in addition to simply being good with excel. Incidentally being good with excel/VBA can mean that you're visibly productive in some new place of employment that is reliant on it, certainly useful to keep on top of if you're to be some sort of business analyst/data analyst type.

Data Science tends to involve postgrad level knowledge in stats, ML etc.. so maybe a few years away at the moment though I guess job titles can vary considerably.

Thanks for the reply. I already have a degree but in Business studies. Graduated over 9 years ago so to late to do anything with....options at the minute seem to be more of the same logistics types roles. All the anaylst roles require SQL, tableau experience which I do not have.

 

[Amplus]

Its still good that you've got one - for a lot of places simply having a degree ticks a box in terms of the HR filter at least so you can perhaps focus on just acquiring the skills you need/want without necessarily having to study additional "stuff" in order to fulfil some credit requirements and get a degree if you didn't have one.

I think one thing that might help you on the business analyst side could be something like this (if you didn't want to take a pay cut and wanted to stick on your current role for little while longer)

https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/advanced-diploma-in-data-and-systems-analysis

Thats a one year part time/distance learning course equivalent to 60 credits (so half a year at university) that seems to covers stuff that would be very useful for a BA role. It is a good brand name to have on your CV, it looks like a useful course and given you're already a graduate then I think doing something like that would be sufficient to show that you're keen on a career change and you've got some credible, relevant skills now to make that career change happen.

You could look at also doing some coursera courses or the udacity data analyst nano degree or similar too if you're edging more towards data analyst type roles.

If you were then interested in progressing to some sort of data science role then you'd perhaps need to get a better grounding in some undergrad applied maths (at 1st/2nd year level and some stats) - one of the below courses offered by LSE via the University of London International program would solve that for you. In particular multivariate calculus, linear algebra and optimisation ought to be studied if you want to then go on to seriously study stats/ML (you could perhaps self study/revise calculus and get a start on linear algebra before taking one of these courses).

https://london.ac.uk/mathematics

https://london.ac.uk/data-science

I posted some links to some other useful course that don't result in a qualification but are great for revision or for learning in the below thread too, I really liked the Stanford Engineering Everywhere site and the MIT open courseware site - they predate the MOOCs where you pay/get a certificate etc.. but they've got some excellent content - some links in the below thread:

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...-degree-does-anyone-have-any-advice.18845165/

Honestly really appreciate all of the above. Going to look further into that course tonight. Thanks for your help some great stuff there!