Traineeship experience report II

zweipunkt employee Helen successfully completed our Data Analysis & Visualisation Traineeship in spring 2022 and has been an important part of our team as a Junior Digital Data Analyst ever since. In our short interview, she looks back on her experience and development over the past six months.

Let's start at the beginning: What motivated you to apply for the "Data Analysis & Visualisation" traineeship at zweipunkt?

During my studies, I became increasingly enthusiastic about the world of data analysis and everything that goes with it. I quickly realised that I wanted to continue my education and development in this field after finishing my studies. When I came across zweipunkt's job advert, I applied for it straight away. The description of the six-month traineeship and the agency as a whole made a very structured impression on me and promised a working environment in which you can learn a lot in a short space of time. Raffa and Chris' traineeship report also gave me a lot more information about the traineeship beforehand.

Was your first impression confirmed during the traineeship?

Absolutely. My traineeship manager was at my side from day one. She organised everything relating to the traineeship and coordinated the kick-off and presentation dates with the supervisors of the individual use cases. In addition to these activities, she took care of my personal well-being and we had regular feedback meetings to discuss what was going well and where there was still room for improvement.

Another positive experience was the first week, when I had a half-hour "get-to-know-each-other" with each team member, giving me the opportunity to get to know everyone briefly and find out roughly what they do at zweipunkt and which customers they are mainly responsible for.

New to the traineeship and also new to me was a strong focus on competences and the competency model on which the traineeship is based.

How does the competency model work in the traineeship?

The aim of the traineeship is to build up the knowledge and skills that a junior analyst at zweipunkt should have over the six months. Ultimately, a permanent position as a Junior was our common goal. What was completely new for me was the orientation towards a defined competence requirement profile. This describes the individual competences that can (and should) be developed over the course of the traineeship with the help of practical use cases and allows for a systematic review and documentation of competence development over the course of the traineeship and beyond.

In addition to subject-specific skills such as the use of tools like Google Analytics or Tableau, the skills requirement profile also includes interdisciplinary organisational, social-communicative and personal skills dimensions. These include, for example, project planning and implementation, presentation skills, work behaviour and cooperation within the team.

The skills management tool skillhub.ch was used to assess and visualise skills development.

I used it to carry out an initial self-assessment after the first three months, which was supplemented by an external assessment by the traineeship manager.

The evaluation of the two assessments helped me to determine where I stood and showed me what I needed to focus on in the second half of the traineeship. As Fig. 1 shows, the three competence categories on the left-hand side of the circle are still not very pronounced. However, this was exactly as intended, because in the first half of the traineeship I was primarily supposed to learn the basics of digital analytics, i.e. how to use Google's entire Analytics product range. It was only in the second half that the focus was on data visualisation, reporting and analytics with Tableau, the area in which I wanted to expand my skills right from the start.

In the second half of the traineeship, thanks to the support of my supervisors, I was able to expand precisely these skills on the left-hand side of our competence circle and deepen my know-how by means of various use cases in the Tableau area.

For me personally, this type of self-assessment and external assessment is a real added value. It allows you to constantly review your own skills development and to build up and develop skills in a targeted and continuous manner. And not just during the traineeship, but above all beyond. This has reinforced my impression that zweipunkt is interested in investing in the development of its employees, which I greatly appreciate.

What did you particularly like about the traineeship?

I particularly liked the fact that the traineeship as a whole was structured in such a way that the entire six months could be used to work in a practical way and thus build up the essential and required skills for a junior function at zweipunkt. The use cases, which are based on real, past projects, allow you to gain experience and learn new things in a very short space of time. You receive the best possible support, challenges and encouragement from your colleagues throughout.

I was even lucky enough to be able to work on a real customer enquiry after a month - in consultation with the customer - as the timeline and content fitted in perfectly with the traineeship. Towards the end of the traineeship, I was also increasingly involved in customer projects, which meant more responsibility on the one hand, but was of course also a lot of fun, as I was able to apply the knowledge I had learnt in practice and also got to know even more new Tableau functions. This is also thanks to the partnership-based, benevolent and transparent cooperation that zweipunkt maintains with its customers.

To summarise, I couldn't have wished for a better start to my career after graduating. For me, the traineeship was an ideal mix of independent learning and supervised development of my professional (and personal) skills. Thanks to the traineeship, I can now continue to work on my skills as a Junior Digital Data Analyst at zweipunkt and take on more and more responsibility both internally and in relation to customers.