Hey everyone!

It has been a while since my last blog post. A lot has happened. Where I left off, I was finishing up my contract with a school system where I provided phone support to hundreds of parents, teachers, students, etc; This post will bridge the gap with what I’ve been up to since then.

I was in a job search for about a year, kind of at that point where I had grown so much to realize, is IT really for me? It was an honest question. I wasn’t sure if I’d want to do back to back phone calls every day for the rest of my life, just to be honest. However, I have a heart of passion for technology and a heart to help others, and that overrides my comfort, so it was a conviction I had been weighing on for quite some time. In this limbo, I took a lot of time to breathe and reflect – there were some home projects, but it was mainly a time of figuring out the next steps for my life.

The Limbo Period

About 5 months ago, I had started to get back into the swing of the job search. (I was still strategically sending out job applications during my brief season of rest, but this was when I got really back into the swing of everything and decided I wanted to land my next IT job.) In the middle of this uncertainty whether I got a job or not, I also briefly got into commissioning music production services and I really got to shape my customer service skills, especially on the more professional side. I provided services on Upwork for audio mixing and audio restoration. I also worked on a sophisticated project to transcribe thousands of audio files to text, ordered in chronological order, which I got done fast with an automation tool I created.

Vroom vroom

At this time, I was also working on buying a car, figuring out life decisions like they were chess. I wasn’t even sure why I was looking for a car, but I felt innately that I needed one for this next chapter in my life. As a Christian, I don’t necessarily blame things to be fully coincidental. One of those days during my car search, with the recruitment of help, I was able to buy a pickup truck for $1,000, with 77,000 miles on it.

Shortly after finding out about this truck, before I had even bought it, I just so happened to get a call from a recruiter shortly after. This recruiter was looking for desktop support technicians for a medical building that was being built. I expressed my interest and a few weeks past and I hadn’t heard back. I almost lost hope. Keyword is almost. I got the truck in hand, and then a week later, I got a call from the recruiter about the job offer.

Desktop support at the medical facility

This job would be monumental to my personal development in other areas that the school system job was lacking. I was able to take on much more physical work, while still being able to see the ins and outs of a IT job. As a person who enjoys the more technical aspects of things, I found this as a personal challenge to try and make the job as technical as I could, even if there were some days I was just unboxing and preparing equipment. I did have opportunity to patch in network connections in the data closet, and I also had opportunity to install some access points around the facility. I really enjoyed this job as it was a start-to-finish picture of something that was actively being built. I got to see it from no technology in the building at all, to even the point where we were taking old equipment from other sites and recycling it or repurposing it.

Transitioning to the next role

The contract was coming to a close and I was starting to think, okay God, what’s the next step here? Where do you want me to go? I was applying around, extremely excited to throw myself directly into another role. This job really sealed the deal for me because I got more perspective of the IT world to know that it’s not all going to be a back to back call center situation. And, don’t get me wrong- I thrived in that environment too, the call center highlighted a lot of my strengths, there’s no doubt about that. But I was extremely relieved to know there’s a lot of other layers to IT, which I got to truly see in this project being part of the infrastructure team to deploy hundreds of workstations. I even got to enjoy the technical aspects when we started end-user troubleshooting for doctors, nurses, and receptionists. All in all, it was a great project, and I had a great team that pushed me because they saw the potential I had and wanted me to walk in confidence.

Getting traction with a government job

Now, one day after everything was slow, I was applying for jobs on my phone and I decided I would apply for some government jobs that I saw. I took all the time in the world to focus on these applications since there was nothing better to do, as we had already completed our work for the day. I submitted a solid application and left it there. I got a call for an interview maybe about a month from the submission of that application, and it lined up with about 2-3 weeks left at my current contract, so the timing was super on point. The interview was a 4-person panel interview. I won them over with the skills I had just been developing at the medical facility. I focused on making contact with everyone and digging into the topic to show my passion. I remember even complimenting one of the interviewers at the very beginning because I noticed he was drinking coffee by saying, “Oh, you’re a coffee drinker too, huh? – And in that moment, I could feel a lot of ice shattering from any tension after they started to laugh at that with a brief conversation being made. I leaned into that comment as my momentum for the tone of the interview and how to present myself.

In the door of Government IT

This was one of my first interviews, and maybe only, where I had truly felt comfortable, and felt like I could present myself with no fear. It almost felt like I was a bird that could fly anywhere I wanted, and I would have found a branch to lean on. They were significantly supportive and encouraging, looking for someone to embed with the team long-term. At one point in the interview I had a daydream moment, almost like a vision, where I got this loud thought that these are really good people to work with. In just a split second, that feeling hit me. I took this as an extremely positive sign. A week or so later, I found out I got the job. I now work in city government and deliver amazing support for amazing people. I can’t reveal all the aspects of my job, similar to any job, just for any specific priority information getting out there, but what I can tell you is that they are great people and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon.

Lessons Learned

Wrapping up this post, I wanted to just say to anyone in the field, or anyone trying to be, it really comes down to knowing who you are, and not holding back from what you can deliver. Integrity and the ability to show your failures in a way that is productive will weigh a lot to those who are hiring you. They want to see drive, not perfection. They want to see humility and the longing to be better, not pride. Especially with customer-facing roles, the way you carry yourself clues them in a lot about how you’ll perform in front of a customer. Continue to be loving, continue to be kind, continue to be patient. Those qualities will stand out and customers will see a genuine care for their need. It is important to recognize that. Certifications will show the technical and adaptable side of you, certainly, but also be sure to weigh them out with personality and the ability to collaborate professionally.