Experience

The facts an interviewer skims for, grouped by what I can do now and what I'm still learning. The detail is on the project pages.

Volunteering & Work Experience

Data Analyst Volunteer

June 2026 - present · flexible hours, in my own time

RE(YOU)S C.I.C.

RE(YOU)S is a Coventry community interest company that takes in unwanted items and gets them back into use. Since June 2026 I've been its volunteer data analyst. The job is to make the organisation's numbers trustworthy: I help decide what gets recorded as items come in and go out, clean up what's already been logged, and turn it into reporting on waste diverted, carbon avoided and households reached. Those figures are what the organisation uses to show its impact, so if I record the wrong thing, someone else repeats it. It's the one place on this site where other people rely on my work rather than me practising on my own.

Retail Assistant Volunteer

December 2021 - April 2022

Scope Charity

  • Dealt with customers face-to-face in a busy shop, including handling difficult queries
  • Stock organisation, keeping the shop floor tidy, and working as part of a small team with minimal supervision
  • Assisted customers in finding products and provided recommendations
  • Adapted communication style to suit different customers including elderly and vulnerable people

Certifications

  • Google AI Essentials, Google, 2026
  • Databases and SQL for Data Science with Python, IBM, 2026
  • CompTIA A+ (220-1201 / 220-1202): studying for Core 1

Education

School

St Thomas More Catholic School, Nuneaton · GCSEs, 2023

Maths
Grade 5
English Language
Grade 4
Combined Science
Grade 6-6
Creative iMedia
Level 2 Merit

English Language 4 and Maths 5 meet the grade 4 minimum in English and maths that apprenticeships ask for, so there's no catching up to do before training starts.

Awards

  • Duke of Edinburgh Award (Bronze)

Technical Skills

  • Active Directory: users, OUs, security groups, password resets, enabling and disabling accounts
  • Group Policy: password and lockout policy, mapped drives, wallpaper; gpupdate and gpresult to diagnose it
  • Windows Server 2022: roles, static addressing, DNS on the DC, a DHCP scope with options
  • File shares: share versus NTFS permissions, mapped drives, testing as the user
  • Proxmox VE: bare-metal install with boot flags, VM creation, VirtIO drivers, ISO verification
  • Windows 10 and 11 workstations: edition change, domain join, RSAT, remote management
  • Networking on one subnet: IPv4 addressing, DNS and DHCP; ipconfig, nslookup and netsh to diagnose
  • Remote access: RDP, SSH, VNC
  • Linux desktop (Mint): command line for disks, mounts and scripts
  • PC building and hardware fault-finding (see the server build)
  • Documentation: every step and snag on this site was written up as it happened
  • Microsoft 365: Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint from the user side. The admin centre, Entra and Exchange are things I'd learn on the job.
  • AI tools: Claude and ChatGPT, used to build and ship Roll For Pets; Google AI Essentials. I use them to build and to get unstuck, and I say so when I have.

Learning now

  • CompTIA A+ (220-1201 / 220-1202): Core 1 first
  • PowerShell: one-liners so far (the RSAT install, Get-WindowsCapability); working towards scripting user creation
  • SQL and Python: IBM course done, and it's helped me in my work with RE(YOU)S.
  • Incident logging and ticketing: not yet. The lab has no ticket system, and this is the first thing I want to learn properly on the job.

Professional Skills

  • Explaining technical things in plain English: the homelab write-up is written so a non-technical reader can follow it
  • Working unsupervised: the whole homelab, and the Scope shop floor with minimal supervision
  • Accurate record keeping: the RE(YOU)S data, and every snag on this site written up as it happened