My name's Dhruv Patel. I'm a full-time data scientist working here at Toyota. My career started five years ago as an apprenticeship, and since then I've graduated from university. Got my degree. I've become a full-time data scientist.
As you can imagine on the apprenticeship, there was a lot of balancing of time I had to do between learning at university and the revision and the courses I had to do, but also still committing to delivering projects at Toyota. So being able to balance these two things has helped me as a full-time data scientist because there's a lot more to do now.
One of those things that I've developed is my presentation skills, being able to, as I mentioned earlier, use my skills as a data scientist to do the hard work behind the scenes, but then also making that into an outcome that other people can understand.
We use a lot of data in order to make business decisions. So that goes into things such as machine learning or things such as AI which helps optimise the performances across the business.
I love the motor industry. You can think of everything from a bus, a train, a car, motorcycle, even for disabilities out there, such as wheelchair users - automotive touches all of those things. That's why this industry is so important.
It was a big change moving out at 18, having a job, doing the apprenticeship. But my parents were there to support me. Personally, I think I was a little bit nervous.
There's always that bit of uncertainty about things, but looking back at the four years on the apprenticeship program, I'd like to have enough in my, kind of, my arsenal, shall we say, to validate the value that I've added to the business.
Be open-minded, be interested in what excites you, but also encourage what doesn't excite you or what you might think is new to you, because you may enjoy it. So don't say no to what could be your future.
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