Kick-starting careers with personalised mentoring

A member of the STFC Hartree Centre team mentored a Unilever data fellowship graduate, boosting professional skills and confidence.

Challenge

Unilever has a growing cohort of new data science practitioners, with a significant number of their employees completing Level 4 Data Analyst apprenticeships. To continue the training of their new team member and further develop their skills, Unilever approached the Hartree Centre for personalised one-to-one mentoring. The Beauty and Personal Care Science and Technology team at Unilever wanted to develop awareness in industry use cases of machine learning, which the Hartree Centre specialists are integrating through mentoring. Unilever and the Hartree Centre have developed a strong partnership over the last ten years over a variety of projects that address industry challenges. The Hartree Centre team used this experience to design a development programme to address training needs in machine learning.

Approach

Our team worked with one of Unilever’s data scientists to build an internal data dashboard to share resources. Part of the mentorship was to develop the data scientist’s use of coding in Python and SQL. They met each week over the course of six months for bespoke one-to-one training. As well as expanding their practical machine learning knowledge our team supported the mentee in designing and creating a fully implemented data dashboard, to globally share internal resources. Through the coaching, the Hartree Centre provided extensive real-world experience in using Python and machine learning for industry, which the data scientist was able to feed back into the team at Unilever.

Benefits

The Hartree Centre provided extensive real-world experience in using machine learning for industry helping the mentee to design and build a data dashboard that has been globally rolled out across Unilever. This bespoke training has expanded the mentee’s skills base which they have transferred and integrated back into the BPC S&T team. Further boosting the confidence and skills of the newly graduated data science. This mentorship supported Unilever in its dedication to growing the machine learning experience and skills of their new data science practitioners.

The Hartree Centre’s knowledge and teaching has allowed me to grow as a data scientist and helped me deliver key data insights back to my team. Their ability to explain complex topics has been invaluable in developing my data skills.

Ryan Brocklebank, Unilever