WORK HISTORY
There follows a brief account of my work history to date. For further details, click on the highlighted key words:
I have a diverse work history, which is full of ups and downs. Since the age of 16, I always worked during school and university holidays and did part-time jobs. These jobs gave me a great insight into the world of work and different working environments, whether serving customers in a supermarket or making house bricks in a brickyard.
When I finished my degree in 1994, I was undecided on what to do next and worked as a night porter in a local hotel for the next year before deciding to try for a career in Research and Development. I spent the next few months applying for graduate R&D positions whilst studying an NVQ in IT to acquire much-needed MS Office skills, and doing a related work placement at East Mercia Chamber of Commerce.
With little success and no funds to retrain, I eventually abandoned my R&D job search and started looking for alternative work to help me pay off some outstanding student debts.
I started at Securicor ATM Services as a temporary Helpdesk Operative in June 1996. One year later, a new manager took over and appointed me ATM Upgrade Project Coordinator for the UK. I really enjoyed the challenges and responsibility that this role presented and felt that I was well suited to the work. However, it became apparent that Securicor could not offer me permanent employment in this area. Having regularly dealt with external IT staff to discuss ATM software upgrades, I decided that I would like to try software development so I started applying for graduate IT schemes. Many applications, interviews and assessment days later, I was successful in my job search and I left Securicor in July 1998.
I then started a 2-year secondment with IBM as a Trainee Programmer. Following a month's training in COBOL/structured programming, I was to work on various IBM sites for 2 years, with a chance of permanent employment with IBM afterwards. Following the training and a standby period, the entire secondment scheme was terminated by IBM in December 1998.
Undaunted and armed with my COBOL training, I resolved to get myself onto another graduate IT scheme. After 3 months of further interviews and assessment days, I ended up with 4 job offers from The Halifax, Peugeot, CSC and Softlab. This was a tough choice but I opted for CSC's FSG Graduate IT scheme which offered the best training and the most interesting work. As this was a graduate scheme, I had to wait another 6 months until September 1999 for the job to
commence. In the meantime, I did a couple of temporary assignments and started reading-up on object-oriented theory for the forthcoming training. Sadly, I received a letter from CSC 3 weeks prior to the start-date stating that the graduate scheme had been withdrawn due to a "strategic business decision". In a twist of fate however, I was then contacted by CSC in Romford asking whether I would like to go for interview for a similar position. Obviously I leapt at this opportunity and consequently got the job.
In October 1999, I became a Trainee Programmer on CSC's outsourced IT services account with JP Morgan Flemming Asset Management. After a brief spell as an Error Coordinator, I spent the remaining 18 months
as an Intranet Developer, working on in-house and client intranet applications.
At the end of June 2001, CSC made me redundant and I spent the next 16 months trying to secure my next position. Given the terrible state of the job market in web development, I used the intervening months to enhance my skills and knowledge. I have dedicated much of this period to learning about commercial web development including design, cross-browser development, search engine optimisation/submission and FTP. Actively participating in web newsgroups, I taught myself ASP, SQL, VBScript and Access. Using my new skills, I produced 3 web sites including this one.
In October 2002, I started work as an Analyst Programmer at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. Gathering user requirements, writing specifications and coding JavaScript, I tailor an off-the-shelf front-end software solution to suit the demands of the various departments within the chamber. While the JavaScript programming is interesting, I miss working on websites, hence my continuing jobsearch.
Whatever I do next, I will certainly continue to pursue web development, simply because I enjoy it. Besides, I have accumulated far too much knowledge, ability and experience in this field not to put it to good use.
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