It may be a cliché, but dynamite comes in small packages – and this couldn’t be truer when it comes to Mandy. If you hear a click-clack of heels in IT’s passageways, you’ll know that this small package is on another mission to get things done.
Mandy started at Information Technology in 2006, mainly just to help out, but was given the opportunity to join as permanent staff member in 2008. After these eight years, she’s the only woman left among the seven service desk guys, but this Snow White holds her own.
The road to IT had a few twists and turns and it started in 1999 with an application to UWC for a BA degree. Mandy planned on studying Journalism, but she soon found out that it wasn’t quite what she wanted to do. Being a journalist for your school’s newspaper is quite different than studying journalism and doing the real course work. It wasn’t long before she changed her major to Psychology – which was really her calling. Unfortunately she had to give up her studies due to personal reasons.
This year she and Adrian celebrates their tenth anniversary and they have a daughter in grade 4 at de Kuilen Primary. Outside IT she spends most of her time with my family, something she believes in doing as often as possible.
“I call myself a jack of all trades.”
“I was in the retail industry for a while I guess that’s where I got my niche – to offer good customer service, and to pay attention to detail.”
She’s even applied her skills as a dental assistant – “quite an interesting experience”.
“But I needed more job satisfaction, so I enrolled myself in some Basic computer classes, and I guess that’s where my journey began.”
Currently she is a helpdesk agent, and her core duties are to answer calls, log the incidents, do 1st level support, but her job description goes a bit further than that. She also does network administration and software enquiries and is responsible for the Microsoft IT courses, which includes the registrations, bookings, administration, and course enquiries. And that’s her role at IT in a nutshell.
“The best part of my job is the satisfaction that you get when you are able to solve a user’s problem. I guess that is probably our main goal at the end of the day!”
The less pleasant aspect of the job is when all systems just stop working and receive hoards of calls from users demanding answers.
In spite of the stressful moments, there are lighter moments. Like when she facilitates a remote session (VNC) with a new staff member. “”They get such a fright when the mouse moves on their machine, the reaction that you get is priceless.”
“”Being in the IT environment has taught me so much. It’s a place where I have learned to voice my opinions and to swim in the deep end. Every day challenges you, and at the same time it creates a learning curve.”
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