Building a career in data with the Learnovate Work Ready Graduate Programme

“Hibernia offers flexible education programmes that combine in-person sessions with online learning. The college wanted deeper insights about how learners were engaging with its content and came to Learnovate looking for specialists in AI and in data analysis. Luckily, I was selected as the latter,” explains the 25-year-old.

After joining the team, Nilay set about the challenge of extracting and collating user data from deep and disparate parts of the college’s content management system.

“Hibernia College’s blended learning programmes use a flipped teaching model. Over a two-year programme, a student will attend in-person classes and webinars and interact with over 100 interactive digital learning sessions, which generate a lot of data. The challenge for Hibernia was that, while it was investing in well-developed and rich content for students, there were information gaps into how they were engaging,” he says.

“The system, Moodle, was not designed for data analysis, so the process of extracting and organising the data was arduous. However, when we did that, it revealed interesting student engagement trends that enabled the College to refine the effectiveness of its flipped learning approach.”

Despite using his technical expertise to drive positive change for the business, Nilay insists that his biggest achievement was learning to translate complex data problems into easy-to-understand reports for non-technical audiences.

“Before the Work Ready Graduate Programme, I used to think all you needed to do a job was technical expertise, but over the year I came to realise that the key is how you speak with stakeholders. If management doesn’t understand the problem, they won’t understand the solution. Working in a practical setting like Hibernia really helped me develop those skills,” says Nilay, who also earned Scrum Master and Azure AI Fundamentals certifications as part of the programme.

He continues: “The programme organisers in Learnovate were very supportive. Each graduate was assigned a mentor who provided guidance and advice when needed. There were also workshops and reviews – one after six months and a final review at the end of the year – where graduates gave presentations on how they were delivering impact for their company. The idea was to keep graduates accountable, get them comfortable speaking in front of their peers, and encourage them to share the challenges they’ve faced and the solutions they developed. It was always really enlightening.”

Following the programme, Nilay was taken on as a full-time employee with Hibernia College where, in the next 12 months, he plans to build on the success of his work during the Work Ready Graduate Programme.

“Looking forward, I want to automate the tools I built for tracking engagement so that each course is updated regularly. I’m also planning to work with the IT, sales, and marketing teams to develop dashboards so they can track their successes, and I’ve been testing AI tools and software to help us in our day-to-day work. Hibernia College has a welcoming and healthy culture. Everyone is open to change. That makes it easier to have an impact as a data analyst,” he adds.