Meet our Academy Consultants – Freddie Hughes

The Ten10 Academy offers a range of training for anyone from any background. Take Freddie, who studied business management at Cardiff University before beginning his training. He joined his first client in September 2024 so we sat down with him to chat about the work he’s completed for his client and how he’s continuing to develop as he networks with senior members of the tech world.

Take us through your placement and tell us what client teams you’ve worked with

My role is Solutions Analyst, and this generally means that I’m managing API connections, testing and troubleshooting failed API calls, and overseeing customer migrations and onboarding – this will be validating certain criteria like their volume or their revenue or what systems they need or currently on.

One of the key things that I’ve worked on that was really interesting was an Excel-based data analysis project. Essentially, we extracted lots of data from customer profiles and their stakeholder needs and requirements. We created a large pivot table on Excel and drew key insights from there. This was used by loads of teams and we had to think about various stakeholders: what did the finance people need to see for this project? What did the testers need to see? What did project management need to see? And even the CEO used it for certain things to get a high-level view of what was going on.

Was that something you knew you were going to get into, or were to open to anything and seeing where our training took you?

There are large elements of what I was absolutely looking for. I was really wanting something stakeholder management with business analysis, but Ten10 really like to ensure that you’ve got all of the skills needed to help you navigate into any aspect of the tech career. So it was really grateful for them that they trained me up in so many different things and all of which have been in use of some way.

That’s brilliant. Now, what parts of the Ten10 Academy have been most useful in your placement?

The most used things for us are definitely the APIs, the testing, and the general business analysis and stakeholder management. These are really critical for troubleshooting and validating API connections and just generally very helpful for client interactions and interactions with different teams and different stakeholders. They really teach us how to present data to different teams and how to speak in a language that people will understand.

Also what was really useful was more of a way of working. A structured, problem-solving approach which really aided us in making quick decisions and working efficiently.

What is a normal working day or week for you?

I like to get in quite early, to be honest. Just so in the morning I can get all of my prep stuff done and then when I jump on a call with any clients or any stakeholders, I’m up to date and I’ve understood what problems are going on. A lot of the time, they’ll be sending you issues throughout the night that their teams have been working on. So, it’s really great to catch up and you’re not swamped as soon as you get on a call with them.

Midday, I like to work on customer onboarding validations – just generally prep stuff, work on larger projects such as the Excel reporting. Then in the afternoon we like to have standup meetings to discuss the day’s challenges, to update us on where we’re working, any bottlenecks, anything that’s going on. The main thing for me is that there are 16 other consultants from Ten10 here with us. We’re all very young, we’re all very hungry, very eager to learn, but this really creates a very fun, engaging team environment. The day goes quite quickly when you work with other people. So that’s great.

Have your roles or responsibilities changed during your time on placement?

Definitely. Yes. Early on, we were really getting up to speed with specific processes and just generally, the day-to-day running. So we spent a lot of time shadowing the senior analysts. Spent a lot of time learning the processes. Now, we have much more autonomy with our API testing. Much more autonomy to actually go and analyse the issues that the customers are facing and try and solve them ourselves. Obviously if we get stuck, we still have these people that we can fall back on but they’ve taught us really well – with a combination of the training that we’ve received here and the training from Ten10 we are absolutely excelling here and we are just creating and refining stakeholder reports, fixing issues, and just have so much responsibility within the specific projects that we’ve been undertaking.

What technology tools, frameworks, and processes have you gained experience with since starting your client work?

The technology and tools we use that are tech-based are mainly for API testing and just general software testing. We use ReadyAPI to test calls, to test why they might be failing. Generally to change little bits here and there and see how that affects what the end result might be. We used a lot of Excel for data analysis. We use pivot tables and you know what, it’s very common, but we used a lot of PowerPoint and a lot of Outlook just to communicate between people and to present our findings or any changes in the project and generally just tell people how we’re getting along.

Frameworks: a big one for us for stakeholder management was the power interest grid. This really let us analyse who was using what, who we needed to talk to, who had any sort of stake in the projects we’ve been undertaking, because I think a lot of people get too hopped up on ‘okay, I’m working as a tech consultant. I need to developers. I need to talk to software engineers, and to project managers. But you’re in a business, you have to talk to everyone. You have to talk to the people in finance. You have to talk to the customer service representatives because everything you do that affects the tools they use will affect the way that they work. And if the way that they work changes, they need to make sure they’re aware of it before the changes occur.

That’s really good because it shows the importance of your role and the fact that you’re working in your team but you do speak to other people. Which is also why I think the Ten10 academy trainers are very good: because they ensure you have the professionalism to be able to go and speak to different people. You’re not just limited to your own team, you’re also getting experience from other people that are higher up than you and in different teams.

Yeah, that was a really important aspect of the training – the ways of working that you have to be as a professional. How you have to talk to people and how you have to present information. It really helped us talk to so many different teams and generally understand how people like to receive information because you’re not going to talk to someone that works in finance the same way that you would talk to a software developer.

How has your client supported your development?

The client has been absolutely fantastic with our development. When we came in, they knew we weren’t going to understand the nuances of how they like to work so we had a lot of training sessions on their internal systems. But they understand that people forget things over time and sometimes they need a catch-up. So we went over a lot of the aspects of our training. We relooked at APIs and testing. We had a lot of daily stand-ups that helped us show our progress updates and show how we’re resolving issues. This also really helped our communication networks build. We understood who was above us and who was interested in what, and generally who we had to talk to make sure that the job could get done.

As I mentioned earlier, we had a lot of shadowing opportunities with more experienced team members. This was great because it let us see the most efficient way for us to do things. The client has let us bee incredibly autonomous with our projects, which has really helped us to build our confidence and really helped us to build our skills.

I think shadowing is such an important part of working somewhere. Personally, I need to learn by doing and seeing someone lead by example. And you’re able to ask questions at the same time. It’s very good that they’re having you do that because, in my opinion, that’s the best way to pick something up.

Yeah, definitely. You might have your own way of doing something, but if you shadow someone that’s far above you, [who’s] been doing it for a lot longer, they might show you little tricks that you can use just to save a little bit of time, and that will help you get more work done in the day.

What support have you received from Ten10 during your placement?

Ten10 has been absolutely fantastic with us. They’ve taken a really multifaceted approach to how they’re going to support us. We’ve been having a lot of monthly debriefs. Not only based on the work and the challenges and how we’re progressing, but also based on how we’re feeling as people, not as consultants. Because Ten10 understands that you really need to be happy and satisfied in your work if you’re going to achieve great things.

I’ve had a lot of mentorship from Matthew [McCormick], who’s given me a lot of testing insights. Just general, issues that he’s noticed on the web pages that we’re working on. I would then send these over to the testing team and have a little talk with them about it. Just in general, Ten10 has been giving us continuous training and guidance and this has really helped us improve our technical and professional skills.

Have you been given any extra opportunities through your client work?

We’ve been given the opportunity to network with large companies and very senior IT members within those companies. I could not tell you the number of chief of IT officers that I’ve had the opportunity to network with. We’ve had so much exposure to high-level decision-making. We’ve worked with so many teams and we’ve understood how businesses develop and how businesses operate and we’ve used this information to try and deliver the most value that we can not only to our client but also to our client’s clients.

If there’s anybody watching this who’s thinking about applying to the Ten10 Academy, what would you say to them?

I would say just go for it. It could be the best decision you ever made. It could propel you into a career that you absolutely love and are so passionate about. What have you got to lose, really? I mean, what’s the downside?