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Career history

• IT Technician
  Sussex Downs College
  March 2004 to present. Local Authority Scale 4.
• Website Assistant
  Manchester Phoenix Ice Hockey Club
  June 2007 to present. Voluntary position.
• Freelance IT Technician and Website Designer
  Various clients
  July 2004 to present. Paid per project/call-out.
• Variable Hours Lecturer – Web Design (Adult College) & ICT (Functional Skills)
  Sussex Downs College
  Jan 09 to present. Pay claims “Band A” (£22.10 per hour).
• Technical Assistant
  Impact Gaming (Internet and Online Gaming centre)
  July 2003 to January 2004. £10,732 per annum.
• Customer Service Assistant
  WHSmith – Terminus Road, Eastbourne
  October 2000 to September 2003. £4.58 per hour.
• Programming Assistant
  I.B.M. (Eastbourne office)
  February 2001. 1 week unpaid work experience.

 

Academic qualifications

 

The Open University – Oct 08 to Jun 09

• AA100: “The Arts, Past and Present” – Pass (60 points degree credit)
• M150: “Computing, Data and Information” – In Progress (30 points degree credit)
• M255: “Object-Orientated Programming in Java” – In Progress (30 points degree credit)

 

Park College, Eastbourne – Sept 00 to Jun 03

• D – AS Law
• D – AS Photography

• D – A2 General Studies
• C – A2 English Language and Literature
• C – A2 Computing

• C – AVCE ICT Advanced (6-unit)

 

Ratton School, Eastbourne – Sep 95 to Jun 00

10 GCSEs at C and above, including:

• A – English Literature
• B – English Language
• B – Mathematics

 

Other courses and qualifications

• 2011 – Dyslexia, ADHD and Dyspraxia awareness
• 2011 – NVQ Level 2 & Technical Certificate in Customer Service – Distinction
• 2010 – Equality and Diversity awareness
• 2010 – Full UK driving licence (no endorsements)
• 2010 – Safeguarding (Sussex Downs College)
• 2009 – SQL Language (2 days at QA-IQ)
• 2009 – First Aid at Work certification (4 days at St. John’s Ambulance)
• 2008 – Windows Server 2003 (1 week at QA)
• 2008 – Windows Server 2003 (3 days at QA)
• 2007 – Windows XP deployment (2 days at FEDA)
• 2006 – Wireless networking (1 day at TaskIT)
• 1998 – City & Guilds – Amateur Radio and Electronics (Radiocommunications Agency)

 

Skills

 

Technical

I became interested in building and fixing electronic devices quite early on as a result of studying for and obtaining my Novice Amateur Radio licence at the age of 11. This lead me to complete the “Full” (now “Advanced”) licence at 13, and to take my own home computer to pieces and back shortly afterwards. I have since worked as an IT/Network technician since late-2003, and have gained skills in installing and maintaining both hardware and software assets. I take a very logical approach to fault-finding, and am well able to use tools such as multimeters to diagnose faults at a deeper level than just ‘replace the part’.

I am experienced in computer user support, laserjet printer repair and maintenance, desktop and laptop computer repair and maintenance, network setup and maintenance (including wireless), installing and maintaining a Windows Server 2003 environment, and more.

Coding

I have experience with HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, SQL, JavaScript, Visual Basic and Java. I am adept at finding and adapting open source scripts in order to accomplish complex tasks either in part or in full, rather than wasting time “re-inventing the wheel”, yet can code from scratch and by hand if required.

While my current full-time job does not have a lot of use for these skills, I enjoy using them in my teaching and web design work.

Communication and Interaction

My years in user support have equipped me with a friendly and patient telephone manner, excellent communication skills, and the ability to extract required information from a caller when they are not entirely sure what is going on themselves.

I work well both as part of a team or on my own, and appreciate the need to keep communication lines open between myself and customers and the rest of the team. I can lead and follow with equal efficiency, and will often use diagrams and examples to illustrate my ideas and convey them to others. Communication is one area in which I feel that the Internet has greatly enhanced our lives, and surely nobody has an excuse now for being ‘out-of-touch’.

Management Experience

While I have little formal experience in management, I have recently learned a lot about people and project management through running a website I co-founded back in September. My favourite ice hockey team, Manchester Phoenix, switched from the Elite League to the English Premier League, and while this was fantastic news for the team, it was not such great news for fans who were unable to travel to matches as the website we all used for live match-night updates did not cover our new league. In a classic case of being in the right place at the right time, a fellow fan and I had the idea to set up our own website for the EPL while watching an exhibition game together in May. We managed to get the website online just 3 days before the start of the season, and still had a number of updaters to get at the various rinks around the country.

I now manage and co-ordinate a team of 10 primary updaters, 5 backup updaters, a website assistant, 3 chat-room moderators and I serve as both Website Lead and Project Co-ordinator. There have been fallings out between the moderators, trolls in the chat-room, and even clashes between the updaters over who’s format is ‘the best’. I have had to keep lines of communication open to the team and users alike, and calm all of these arguments and more, and now have a smoothly running team which spans all across England and provides an effective and user-driven service to hockey fans as far afield as Germany, Canada and Japan.