From a career in customer service to data analytics

As many international students know, breaking into the UK job market can be quite challenging at first. While it wasn’t any different for Sola, he found that his prior work experience as a marketer back in Nigeria gave him an advantage when looking for jobs in the UK as an international student.  

"After my bachelor's, my first job was as an international business development executive at a travel agency. I worked there for a while, then left to return to my city and joined the family’s audit firm as a consultant," Sola said, reflecting on his journey before moving to the UK. 

His first job in the UK was as a customer service advisor at E.ON Next, a role he landed through a friend’s recommendation. While it wasn’t directly related to data analytics, it gave him valuable exposure to develop transferable skills in areas like customer behaviour, operational processes, and problem-solving within a corporate setting.  

"I wasn’t really on the front line, but I was dealing with customer data since I was involved with managing residential energy accounts and assisting customers with inquiries and settling bills" he explained.  

This nature of his work and his curiosity to dig deeper and to find out the ‘why’ behind things, led him to apply for an internal promotion as a performance insight analyst at E.ON EIS about a year and a half into his job. 

The new role gave him the responsibility to analyse customer feedback, track key performance metrics, and provide insights to shape business decisions.  

“It’s more than just tracking campaigns, it’s about truly understanding what our customers are telling us,” Sola explained. 

Even in Sola’s current role as a performance analyst, he has found that several core marketing skills remained essential: 

• Understanding consumer behaviour – "When you read customer feedback, you start seeing patterns, what are they really trying to tell me?" Sola emphasised how his background in marketing helped him step into the shoes of the customer, making it easier to identify key insights. 

• Communication & storytelling – Presenting data effectively is key. "You need to write and present insights in a way that even someone with zero context can understand. This was a skill that I solely developed by having a background in marketing." 

• Strategic thinking – Marketing teaches you how to assess market needs, just like business analysts assess business sectors. 

These transferable skills give marketing graduates an edge in analytics roles. The key is knowing how to position them effectively. 

Sola Agbeye, speaking at a Coventry University event

For those looking to break into data-focused roles for the first time, Sola suggests taking a proactive approach: "Start by shadowing people. Reach out and ask if you can observe their work. Once you've done it, let people know how you did it, and use platforms like LinkedIn to showcase your experience."  

Taking initiative, refining your approach, and continuously improving the quality of your work will help set you apart in the competitive job market. 

"Sometimes we do things on a day-to-day basis that we don't realise are actual skills that can land us jobs," Sola pointed out. Take your university dissertation, for example. researching, analysing trends, interpreting findings: this is data analysis in practice. 

“When applying for roles, don’t just list job titles or coursework. Instead, highlight the analytical aspects of your experiences.” Sola advised.  

Whether it's tracking engagement metrics for a student project, handling customer insights in a part-time job, or optimising content strategy based on user behaviour, these are all ways you've worked with data without realising it. 

Tailoring your CV to fit the exact job requirements is a widely recommended practice, but Sola takes it a step further with a technique that has worked well for him, “setting a theme for each application”.  

He advised: "Never have a generic CV, always tailor your CV to every single application you're making.". When applying for data and analytics-heavy positions, it's crucial to emphasise skills like problem-solving, research, and data interpretation to showcase your analytical abilities. 

Creating a theme for your CV can make a significant difference. If you're targeting a business analyst role for example, highlight the analytical responsibilities you handled, even in non-technical jobs.  

Similarly, if you're applying for a more operational data role, you could emphasise how you contributed to building strong stakeholder relationships and collaborated with different teams. 

Beyond structuring your CV, another adjustment you can make is to focus on impact rather than just listing tasks. Instead of simply stating that you ‘managed social media accounts,’ a more effective approach would be to say, ‘analysed engagement trends to optimise content strategy, increasing reach by X%,’ making your contributions clear and more measurable. 

To sum it all up, Sola’s journey shows that with the right mindset, constant curiosity and by developing transferable skills, switching to a data-focused role is entirely achievable, regardless of the degree you hold.