Graduate Programme Spotlight - Andy Kyle

Name:

Andy Kyle

Job Title: 

Graduate Business Analyst 

Course studied / Degree

B.Sc. Business with Information Technology

What does Covernet’s grad programme offer?

Covernet’s grad programme offers the opportunity to gradually build up your skills and expertise through a mix of training projects and on the job training. Throughout the grad programme you will work on several different Covernet systems as part of training projects to build a level of knowledge and confidence before starting to work on actual customer projects.

The first few weeks of the grad programme helps to settle you in and give you an introduction to the company and the teams/individuals you will be working with. You will also have a session to give you a general overview of the insurance industry and explain a lot of the processes and terminology you are likely to encounter in the upcoming months. These sessions help give you a strong foundation in Covernet’s processes and are key in ensuring you are well prepared before you start working on your training projects.

After the introduction sessions you will then start working on training projects before moving onto customer projects. You will have the opportunity to do a training project for each of the different Covernet systems and each project focuses around a different area of functionality. The projects are based off previous customer jobs and have members of the Business Analyst (BA), Development and Quality Analyst (QA) teams involved so give you a chance to start getting to know your colleagues and ask lots of questions.

Covernet has extremely experienced BA, Developers, and QA's who have developed their skills and knowledge working on software for some of the largest insurance companies across the UK and Ireland, the opportunity to work closely alongside these individuals on all aspects of the development life cycle has been an excellent learning experience and has personally brought my experience and BA skillset to a new level of competence.

What are your key learnings to date?

One of the main learning points for me at the beginning of the process was to get a familiarity with the insurance industry and how it all works, as a BA it is important to understand the customers’ needs, and at the beginning there was a lot of new terminology and processes to understand before being able to do my job well. The diversity of jobs I’ve worked on and the fact that many of my colleagues have such a vast experience working on products for the insurance industry meant that there was always someone to answer my questions, and throughout the grad programme I believe I have built a strong understanding of how Covernet’s customers use our systems and can provide comprehensive analysis of their needs to provide the development and QA teams with well documented requirements.

The management team at Covernet are very involved in your progress throughout the grad programme and you will find yourself in constant contact with a Development Manager who provides feedback on your work and gives you the opportunity to provide feedback on the process. The management team are very encouraging for grads to take on additional responsibilities should you wish to. Therefore, there is always to opportunity for growth and development even when classed a new start. I was lucky enough to be able to take on the BA role on the development of a new customer product, which has been a challenging but very rewarding project and has been an invaluable learning experience especially as there is a strong support structure behind you during the grad programme.

If you are studying in IT / Software and interested in taking up a graduate role I would highly recommend checking out Covernet's programme. And keeping an eye out for the next graduate intake. 

Read Graduate Software Developer Enda's story!