From a cultural heritage student to a DevOps Engineer. It might not sound like a natural fit, but Gerald (28) made the leap anyway. We asked him about this transition, what attracts him to IT, and how he applies theory in practice.
My move from the museum sector to the IT industry began because of a lack of career prospects. I started looking around in the IT field, and when I came into contact with Alistar, it just felt right right away. It’s a company full of enthusiastic and driven people, and things are really well organized for employees. And I don’t just mean the after-work get-togethers. It’s precisely the personal guidance, the traineeships, and the workshops that are of great value to me. I’ve been working here for two years now. During my internship I earned all the necessary certifications and worked at the service desk at Avans University of Applied Sciences, where I advanced to become a trainer for Avans’ facilities staff. I trained them to resolve basic issues, so that the facilities department has become a complement to the service desk. And since February, I’ve been working at Rabobank and am taking the Deep Dive-program.
Consulting skills and social skills, in particular, are very useful.
My job title at Rabobank is DevOps Engineer. Our department manages SharePoint and OneDrive globally, so if there are incidents and the service desk is unable to resolve them, we step in to fix them. In addition, we’re constantly developing SharePoint further. We focus particularly on how we can make it more user-friendly. For example, by creating a self-service repair tool for OneDrive, implementing stricter controls on role management in SharePoint, and establishing connections with Azure.
The input I received during the Deep DiveThe training program helps tremendously with that. Consulting skills and social skills, in particular, are very useful. It’s very important to know how to interact with clients, how to quickly get to the heart of the end user’s problem, and how to work effectively with colleagues. The DevOps and Scrum theories are also very valuable. That’s something Rabobank has only just started implementing. It gives us a lot of freedom and responsibility, which in turn is a learning experience. Ultimately, all these skills come together, because the goal of DevOps is for administrators and developers to collaborate more closely. In practice, this is always more challenging than in theory, so it’s very interesting to work on.
What we discuss during the workshops ties in seamlessly with real-world practice.
But I can also use the technical skills I’ve learned every day. What we discuss during the workshops ties in seamlessly with real-world practice. I often find myself thinking, “Oh yeah, I learned that before.” In addition, we’re given assignments to build things ourselves, which helps you figure out how something works even faster. And all of that takes place in a safe environment, without having to worry about breaking anything. Thanks to this work and learning experience, I can now confidently say that I’m no longer a beginner. Especially within the entire Office 365 I've really improved my skills, especially with SharePoint, and I'm constantly working on expanding my Azure skills.
Ultimately, I want to take even bigger steps in IT, moving further toward a consulting role in the field of IT architecture. That involves commercial skills, the art of presenting, and figuring out the question behind the question—and then using technical skills to solve that problem. Hopefully, my next step will be to look at how companies currently operate and identify areas for improvement. It would be great to provide advice that helps them move forward. The great thing is that we’re already learning this through the training we receive and through hands-on experience.
When others have given up, we go the extra mile.
I really feel that these practice-oriented training sessions are preparing me well for the next step. And that I can truly continue to help people. Recently, there was someone for whom we actually couldn’t do anything more. So my colleagues and I decided to take a look anyway, and using our knowledge and experience, we were able to find a solution after all. That’s when you realize how happy people are that you’re there. Even when others have already given up, we at Alistar are happy to go the extra mile to see if we can solve the problem in a different way. Maybe that’s also because we come from other industries—we’re used to thinking outside the IT box. All in all, I’m very proud of the progress I’ve made so far, and I’m confident that I can take the next steps together with Alistar.