Business veteran to tech trailblazer: female apprentice makes bold career change to enter the world of technology

I came to the Digital Apprenticeship from a senior position in AJ Bell Customer Services. I'd built up skills, knowledge and experience in my area, but the closest I'd come to coding at work was crafting nifty Excel formulas. For a long time, software development felt out of reach – too difficult and too broad a subject to seriously contemplate tackling on my own, especially when I already had a full-time job that I enjoyed and was good at. Not to mention the usual ways free time is filled: friends, family, generally enjoying life and the fruits of my labours. Where would I even start? And where would I find the time?

After a decade or so in the same field, however, it's fair to say that I was on the lookout for a new challenge, and with the onset of COVID restrictions came the realisation of how ready I was for change. The shift to working from home was a breath of fresh air (tell me you're an introvert without telling me you're an introvert?) and prompted me to take a good look at where I was, and where I wanted to be.

I've always had a passing interest in coding, but I'd never stuck with it long enough for anything to sink in. Now I was motivated to discover whether, perhaps, this was something I could learn, and enjoy, and turn into a new career.

Happily, this is one field where anyone with a computer and an internet connection can start, on their own, for free. I finally set aside the time for an online introductory computer science course and found that I loved it.

But self-study in your limited free time is one thing; feeling competent enough to start applying for jobs is quite another. Junior developer job adverts have a wishlist of multiple languages, frameworks and, bizarrely, years of experience. I was in my mid-thirties; I didn't have it in me to commit to years of evening and weekend study around work before progressing in my career.

I wanted structured learning, something to give me confidence that what I was doing would get me job-ready as quickly as possible. I looked at government-funded bootcamps, at going back to full-time university (something I never thought I'd do – I much prefer industry to academia), but those options meant months or years without an income and with no guarantee of a job at the end of it.

A techie friend at AJ Bell set the wheels in motion for where I am today. I let slip to them that I was learning to code, and they encouraged me to speak to others on their team. In fact, they pretty much strong-armed me into having that first conversation by telling their manager that I was interested in a career in tech and looking for insight!

After that, I followed up with other individuals across the department, and it became clear that there was a genuine appetite to retain people with experience and knowledge of the business side of things, and make use of that expertise in technology roles.

However, I knew my current work inside out, and I was reluctant to jump in at the deep end and take on a straight-up software developer position when I felt like I had no clue what I was doing.

It was then that I became aware of the Digital Apprenticeship. Initially, I was wary: at four years long, it would be a huge commitment, and I already have a (completely unrelated) social sciences degree.

The more I thought about it, though, the more this seemed to be the answer. One day a week at university getting the theory and basics nailed down, and four days in the office actually learning how to function as a professional software developer? That combination of work experience plus supported learning is, frankly, golden.

A year later, here I am; starting a new career, back at university, and steadily gaining confidence.

The company does a great job of integrating apprentices into teams, so that we're not just putting into practice what we learn at university, but going much, much further. One of the areas I'm working on is a long-term project in which I work closely with other apprentices, but I also have the chance to get involved in smaller tasks that are of immediate benefit to other departments, where I can instantly see the impact of my work.

"Teaching someone to code is easy; teaching someone how the business operates is hard" is something I’ve heard more than once. I'm not convinced it's 100% true, but I definitely feel like I’ve used my knowledge of the business to bring value to the team.

And it’s not just my particular history that has proved valuable, but simply having experience in a professional workplace. If there's anyone out there, at AJ Bell or beyond, who thinks they might be interested in a tech career, my advice would be: don't hold back. Speak to people already working in the industry, get online and get coding.

Transferable soft skills are a real thing – the ones you have built up over your years of employment still have value in a technology setting – and whilst learning to code isn’t easy, for me it's a rewarding (infuriating! energising!) challenge, and I don't regret making this move.

By Jenna, Digital Apprentice