What's your job about?
I’m operating in a fast-paced agile environment as Ampol commences its digital transformation. I’m involved in various retail focused/customer-centric digital initiatives in a varied capacity as a Business Analyst & Project Manager. I wear multiple ‘hats’ so to speak in my team. I’m the go-to person in my team for anything stats-wise. I’m in charge of capturing statistics about our various digital initiatives such as app analytics. I analyse the data and turn it into information that other people can digest. This information is crucial to my department (Digital) making business decisions. My work is both creative & analytical – which I love. Some of the projects I have worked on have involved implementing creative digital solutions that meet our customer or staff needs. When we are developing something, we constantly ask ourselves “what problem are we trying to solve” to make sure whatever we create & do is effective for the end-user. My workday is extremely varied. As I work in an agile fast-paced environment, things tend to move quite quickly and projects start and stop all the time, so you have to be ready to adapt which can be quite exciting.
What's your background?
I’m originally from the UK, I emigrated to Australia in 2000 with my family and grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. I’m one of three girls, eldest sibling to twin sisters who are taller than me! I’ve played a lot of sport growing up from primary school and throughout my uni years. After I graduated high school, I moved into college at Uni which was a brilliant way for me to immerse myself into uni life. I met some great life-long friends and participated in lots of different activities. I lived out of home and worked part-time in retail & hospitality throughout both my uni degrees. I did a little bit of travelling throughout my degrees to south-east Asia. As I was nearing the end of my degree program I started to look for job opportunities on my uni’s career page. I applied to Ampol’s Graduate Program not really knowing what I wanted to do. The program really appealed to me as it was set up in a way that you rotated around the business every 6 months for 2 years. I’ve been at Ampol for about 2 years now. I’m currently finishing the end of the Grad Program after spending time in the Logistics, Retail & Digital department of the business. The structure of the program has really allowed me to learn about the corporate world, its different cultures & people and ultimately work out where I fit into it and really identify my skills & strengths.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes, I think it just depends whether you’ve got the right characteristics for the job. My current role requires someone who is comfortable not fitting into a box so to speak, there is very little structure which works for some people and not for others. I have to be quite self-motivated and autonomous in my role – which is something I enjoy. My role differs depending on different projects, some are extremely customer-facing – which involves speaking to different people and managing different stakeholders in the business. Other projects are more analytical and task-related, which typically means me sitting & working quietly. I think someone who is personable, has great verbal & written communication and time management skills would be able to master the role quite well.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
Working on innovative projects with a team of like-minded people. Part of my job involves a lot of problem-solving – both creative & analytical. I love that feeling when you’ve finally cracked a puzzle you’ve been working on for yonks! A lot of what we do & create in Digital has a real tangible impact on our customers – it’s extremely satisfying to see something you’ve helped to create being used by actual customers. I also love a bit of number crunching – data can be extremely insightful and can have a significant impact on driving business decisions. I’m a big believer in fact-based decision making and part of my job is telling my team & managers what the data is telling us – which is pretty cool!
What are the limitations of your job?
As projects and initiatives move extremely quickly and we operate in a fast environment, there is sometimes an element of always being “on” and finding it difficult to “switch off” as such. Consequently, my work hours really vary – which can be difficult to manage and balance with my personal life. Another part of my job involves engaging with store staff at some of our petrol stations – this means spending some time on trains & buses commuting around Sydney.
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