Guest Blogger: Brittany Peacock

My Name is Brittany, I am from Manchester, but I currently live in Leeds and I studied at the University of Chester achieving a First in Business Management and Marketing Management.

When studying my final year, the UK went into it’s first lockdown meaning all my final exams and lessons were switched to online and it was a worrying time for all graduates, concerned for whether they would be able to obtain a role following completion of our degree. I began researching online for graduates’ scheme, specifically because I was unsure on what role I wanted to do and felt a graduate scheme that could offer rotational elements would allow me to explore options for my career. When I stumbled across the Change Management scheme, I really liked the idea of exploring that change element of a business and being able to be exposed to not only running a project (Project Management Role) but also analysing the value of a project and working with an extensive number of stakeholders to understand their requirements for it to be delivered successfully (Business Analyst).

My Graduate scheme was an 18-month programme involving 6-month rotations in 3 areas, Project Management Office, Project Management and Business Analyst. After 9 months on my programme, I came to the realisation that I really enjoyed the BA role and felt this was the right fit for me, so I decided to apply internally and was offered the role, meaning I completed my graduate scheme early. Following a successful 1.5 years as a Business Analyst, I was recently promoted in March 2023 to Senior Business Analyst, which allows me to take on more high-profile projects/programmes and also mentoring and coaching BAs within our team.

This role allows me the ability to work on so many different projects and different business areas that everyday looks different and it allows me to improve our overall business for our clients, customers, couriers, and employees. My role requires strong stakeholder management and people skills to be able to interact with both technical and non-technical stakeholders on a project. I really enjoy being able to help drive the strategy and contribute to customer journeys and love being able to speak to different people every day.

In September I had my 3-year anniversary at EVRI, and it really has been a whirlwind, but I have learnt so much and been exposed to so many different business areas and projects that it has allowed me to develop rapidly and have progression opportunities I probably wouldn’t have had elsewhere. I was also a finalist at the IIBA Business Analyst of the Year 2023 which is a huge achievement.

As a university Alumni, advice I would give to university students starting to consider their next steps would be spend some time researching graduate schemes. When I left university, I had no idea what I wanted to do so choosing a graduate scheme meant that I could experience several different roles before I decided what the best role suited.