I currently work for the Annual Enterprise Survey (AES) team within National Accounts. This involves collecting and analyzing data from businesses right across New Zealand. Annually we produce data and stories on how the different industries within the economy are performing. As New Zealand’s most comprehensive source of financial statistics, AES is an important data source for National Accounts outputs such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
My work involves investigating the real-world implications of our data movements and keeping up to date with what is happening with New Zealand’s economy.
Our year is split into designing, collecting, validating, analyzing and disseminating our data. With this comes plenty of opportunities to take on projects, such as automating processes, producing new products and working for other teams in National accounts.
On a typical day, you will find me delving into the data to pull out interesting stories (multiple screens are a necessity!) and coordinating meetings and discussions to innovate our collection and the outputs we provide.
I grew up on a small sheep farm near Waimate, so moving to Christchurch to work at Stats NZ was a big change! During high school, I spent my spare time playing sport and working on the neighbouring farm. After school, I wasn’t quite ready to go to University, so I took a working gap year and joined the local forestry crew.
This year was an important year of personal growth for me. It is a demanding and dangerous job, built around the principles of communication and teamwork. My time in the forest reinforced that further education was my next step. Fast forward a few university subject changes, a Statistics interest paper (odd choice right?!), a nerve-racking job interview and here I am at Stats NZ.
I began as a Graduate Analyst in January 2017, and with support and encouragement from my team, I was able to progress to a Statistical and Data analyst, and then to a Design Analyst in mid-2018.
Definitely! Statistical knowledge is a bonus. The key to being a great analyst is having attention to detail, inquisitiveness and problem-solving abilities. My workmates come from a variety of backgrounds enabling them to create a range of different solutions to any issues that occur.
Being in touch with New Zealand. Statistics is all about quantifying the real world. The stories in our data are the stories of New Zealand.
Before working at Stats NZ, I wasn’t very confident with public speaking. Presenting to both my team and wider Stats NZ is an everyday part of my job, so this was something I had to overcome.