Naomi Mason

Job:

Digital Optimisation Executive

Company:

The Co-operative Bank

I work on the Co-operative Bank's website, mobile app and online banking platforms, testing out new ways to improve customer journeys and show different products to customers who may be interested in them. This can be anything from choosing images and designing a 'banner' to promote current accounts, or trialling out where on the page we put the 'Apply now' button. I'm also part of the Digital Bees and Digital Ambassador teams which are outside of my usual day job - so no 2 days are the same!

I am...

Creative

Analytical

Agile

The skills I use most in my job...

Creativity

Analysis

Campaign planning/strategy

Presenting

The most interesting thing I've worked on in my career so far...

It isn't one specific thing that I've worked on but one element of my job that I find really interesting is digging into data. Our customers behave in such unpredictable ways I find it fascinating to look at how they navigate our website and react to certain images or tests that we run on the website. Once we've made a change to the site, we can look at how many people have interacted with it, which page they've gone to next etc. and whether that was how we expected/wanted customers to behave.

What inspired me into digital and tech...

As I mentioned, when I left school I went straight into a trainee program in Accounting. After a couple of years I knew it wasn't for me and wanted a way to be creative in my job. I am a logical thinking and enjoy analysis so when I discovered that 'digital marketing' was a thing, I thought it sounded like the perfect mix of analysis and creativity. I did a basic training course and found it way more interesting than any of my university modules, so I knew I was on the right track!

My educational background is...

I initially trained to be an accountant because I'm quite analytical in my thinking and to be honest, I had no idea about 'Digital' jobs when I was at school making these decisions. I worked at KPMG while training and doing my degree at Durham so graduated with BSc Accounting in July 2019. I knew accounting wasn't for me and missed being creative, so while I was in my final year at university I also did a Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing which I found really interesting - that helped me build up a grasp of basic digital marketing knowledge.

What advice I'd give to girls thinking about a career in digital and tech...

Digital and tech is so much more than coding and computers. Careers in digital for me can be as techy or 'non-techy' - there will be something out there to suit you. My advice would be to look through all kinds of job descriptions and see which ones make you stop and think 'ooh - that sounds cool!' Don't panic if you don't have all the skills - you can learn them. The digital world is always changing so you'll never know everything, just take the leap of faith and give it a go.