BaldeepBirak.com
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About my Career

We all study in education to achieve our goals and wish to work in a particular area in life, whether it's building, technology, astronomy, television etc. Here you can find out how I progressed. As the years go on, this page will develop over time.

Homebase - 5 years 4 months
Back in college I started my part time work at a retail superstore called Homebase. It was a local place and somewhere I will not forget. Working in retail has its ups and downs. From working on tills, to advertising, managing seasonal section of the store (both stock levels and selling the goods to the masses) felt great. On top of this I managed to be the only member of staff to be part of 3 departments (home world, DIY and seasonal).

In order to cover all these departments I had to help with customer order management, paint mixing, cutting worktops and wood (mdf, plywood, hardboard, contiboard etc), carrying out furniture (bbqs, garden tables, patio heaters and more) to customers vehicles as I kept on selling high price goods. One minute I could be manning the information desk (dealing with incoming calls, refunding items, organising staff on the shop floor as well as keeping customers happy) to ending up on the tills or collecting the trolleys.

My career with Homebase span over five years from the age of 16 to 22. It's a good achievement for a student and not many can beat that duration or the total work load I handled. Over the years I could easily say that "I have worked with over 100 members of staff" (mostly students). There are many great moments and I had learnt a lot that will pay off when I'm older. As my education was progressing, I finally left this job to start my career in IT.

Pall Europe (now Pall Corp) - 1 year 1 month
I started this job during the 3rd year (sandwich year) of university degree to develop my skills in the IT industry. The industry year helped me understand some of the theories in our university units during the first, second and final year of the course.

At Pall I worked in a desktop support role that covered mainly second line and desktop work. This meant that I had to fix problems with computer hardware, installing and configure software, create images for new computers and manning the phones during busy periods (covering first line work). As well as the computer support, I also assisted with networking issues, making up network cables, connecting computers to new network points (patching in wall ports and to switches with the assistance of the WAN team) and assisting 3G, broadband and VPN. After 13 months at Pall I went back to university to complete my degree.

VT Group - 2 years
Between this job and my last job I was out of work for the final year of the year of my degree so that I could ensure I achieved the best degree result possible. Within a year, I was back in work with VT Group. Working in a team in a first and second line role we support up to 8000 users.

The work can vary from small jobs like password resets to installing software, creating and managing user accounts and working on Windows Server 2003 to fix a number of problems (such as printing, Citrix sessions and so on). More information about this can be found from my CV.

Taylor Made Computer Solutions - 5 years 10 months
When I started at Taylor Made I was in the roaming outsource engineer supporting Southampton Football club, a power station, a pharmaceutical company, legal firms and so on. I provided IT support to a number of companies in the Hampshire area.

After a number of months I started working permanently as an Outsource Engineer at a customer site. This was for Coffin Mew Solicitors covering 3 offices (Fareham, Gosport and Southampton). The work included remote support, printer swap outs, office moves and even site moves (Fareham and Portsmouth merged into a new office over one weekend). After a tidy up of the Southampton office, replacing all thin clients and a general tidy up of the stock the support calls went down. A new challenge was around the corner with a new client.

After Coffin Mew we took on a client named Advanced Resource Managers (ARM). I started supporting the site from day 1, learning the work life and systems. Later we installed a new rack in the server room and replaced most of the server infrastructure. ARM moved from desktop applications to Citrix. A number of staff went from desktops to Thin Clients and the rest of the machines went from Desktop set up to Thin Client replicas (we called then Fat Clients). In addition we moved over to follow me printing. This reduced calls and kept printing secure with a badge to release your print jobs. My highlights here include:

After ARM was a steady ship. A new challenge arose.

My stint as an outsource supervisor was no longer when I moved to the head office. I worked on the service desk covering tickets from all lines. I became a 2nd Line Customer specialist. I work with a number of clients in the business. In addition I mentor staff in the smaller teams with one to one training, training in groups and working to build up their confidence and communication with clients.

IT Experience (over 10 years industry experience and many more outside of work)

Over the course of my IT career I have worked in 1st/2nd line support, desktop support and even worked with server technologies. Working in industry and during my personal time I have learnt to use a wide range of technologies. They include:

I've been with a number of companies supporting there IT systems since 2006. If you would like to know more or want a copy of my CV, please contact me.


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