My name is Danielle and I live in West Virginia where I work as an IT Asset Tracking Coordinator. The Google IT Support Professional Certificate program has enabled me to take on additional responsibilities in my role, gain more visibility with system administrators and management, work on exciting and impactful projects, and even get a raise. As a single working mom, I’m incredibly proud to have been able to complete this program. Often, my evenings are full of chores and caring for my four year old. Squeezing this program in around family life and a full-time work schedule has not been easy! But it’s been well worth it.
Prior to the program, I had mostly worked in government research and then as a travel manager for a non-profit organization. I have some college credits, but never completed an undergraduate degree. While my husband went back to school for nursing, I focused on caring for our daughter after she was born. Unfortunately, my marriage did not work out and I suddenly had to jump back into the workforce as a single mother. I panicked because I was relatively new to West Virginia and had been out of the workforce for a few years. I needed a plan. I had to boost my skills so that I could hold my own in an IT department, and grab extra shifts at a help desk if necessary to meet our financial needs. The Google program was a perfect fit.
When I first started as an IT Asset Tracking Coordinator, my only responsibility was to pull reports from a system, ping network names, and send emails to let users know their devices were offline. As I progressed through the coursework, I started writing powershell scripts to get more detailed information for devices that I saw online with a particular network name. I was no longer just running a ping batch. I could write powershell code to find the serial number of the device, the mac address, or the user and was able to see the specs on a network device so that I could determine if the device should be replaced. The courses on Computer Networking and System Administration helped me understand how our networks work and, as a result, I started being able to predict issues before they occurred. Now, I investigate our assets and their usage in ways that I couldn’t before
I’m a much stronger contributor at my company now that I have an understanding of the whole picture, instead of one small piece of it. I’m able to run a lot of data analysis now, too, because I know where to get information on network devices. Now my colleagues trust my ability to hunt down the information, compile it, and analyze it properly. It’s so much more than just “I learned task x in the course and now I perform that task” I learned how to think about various aspects of IT in a way that allows me to respond to issues when they occur, as they occur. These are the skills that IT departments really need.
I can’t stress enough that this program didn’t just give me specific skills, it gave me the confidence to do well in an IT setting.
The training is so comprehensive that I was constantly realizing that I understood what was happening around me because I had recently learned about it in the program. I no longer felt like I didn’t belong at my company or that I couldn’t figure things out. With what I learned in the Google program, I have been able to excel at my position by finding solutions to challenges faced by both users and our department.
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Source:
https://blog.coursera.org/see-how-danielle-advanced-in-her-it-role-with-the-google-it-support-professional-certificate/