Confidence

By  Vicky Saunders, IT Service Support Manager at the Civil Aviation Authority.

About: I’ve been working in IT for just over 20 years and my background is primarily around the Service Desk and Deskside Support. I have a passion for delivering exceptional customer service.

A career in IT happened accidently for me. I went to college for a year after school to do a business administration course and didn’t go to university, I know I wanted to go straight into work so an apprenticeship is the route I took.

After working in an admin role for 5 years, I found a company I really liked the sound of and wanted to work for. I applied for a PA role and was unsuccessful.

You know when they say they will keep your details on file for any future roles and you don’t believe you will hear from them again, well I did.  

The IT team were undergoing changes and they were looking to introduce an IT Helpdesk operator which they thought matched my skills. I went for the interview and to my surprise I was offered the job. I’ve never had much confidence in myself, and this was my perfect job.

Within a year I had progressed from logging and flogging calls to being a support analyst. I was now fixing IT issues for colleagues and building a reputation for myself within the team and across the business. I won various team and executive board awards for my performance.

The company was taken over and as with most of the organisation I was made redundant. I think I went for about 10 interviews to find my next role, my confidence was low as I wasn’t sure I had the knowledge to move into another IT role. Again, I was wrong, my skills were completely transferable, and I secured another excellent role. I only stayed with this company for a year until some of my old colleagues persuaded me to move to the CAA where they were working. 16 years later I’m still there. From starting as a Service Desk Analyst, moving into the Lead Analyst position, Service Desk Manager and now the Service Support Manager. I wish I had been more confident in myself during my early career and seen myself the way others had seen me.

Building confidence is something that involves developing self- awareness, embracing challenges, stepping out of your comfort zone and having a positive mindset.

Not everyone is perfect and you will make mistakes but you will also learn from them.

Identify your strengths and weaknesses and acknowledge what you do well and where you can grow.

Accept yourself for who you are as this is the foundation you will need to help you build your confidence.

Even when I was winning team awards I didn’t push myself to go further, I was good at what I was doing and being recognised for it, why would I want to risk that for something that I wasn’t good at and failing. It wasn’t until I took a secondment as a Project Manager, I recognised how stuck I had been.

This gave me the opportunity to learn new things which were outside of my comfort zone, I was now having to present to Senior Managers on the status of projects, having to learn new technologies and work in a different way. I enjoyed having the change and identify that I wanted and needed to develop myself but having a break for an IT operational role also made me realise that was my passion. I liked supporting people with their IT issues and helping get their issues resolved. I moved back into he Service Desk Team Leader role and then progressed to the Service Support Manager role which I had previously been unsuccessful in my application for a few years earlier.

This time I could do it and had a completely different perspective.