Sean Smith
Job Before: Court Clerk
Job Now: Junior Support Analyst @ Gowling WLG
Why did you start the Traineeship?
Since leaving school, I’ve wanted to get into the IT field. Understanding what’s going on in our world of technology is important to me, and the traineeship covered all of that. Given how often we use technology, I wanted to understand it more. The main purpose was to get into the security field, as people close to me have clicked on malicious links that have corrupted their devices or stolen their PII (Personal Identifiable Information).
What did you enjoy most about the Traineeship?
I enjoyed learning about networking and security. The best thing for me was using the practical labs. I could practice what I had learned and come up with solutions. Subnetting and the Security+ course are my favorite parts of the Traineeship, as knowing how to subnet was something I never would’ve thought possible… now I have it in my skill set! Finally, learning how to discover a malicious attack or phishing email in the security+ course spiked my interest in being in the cybersecurity field to protect people from scams and other social engineering attacks.
What's your current role like?
I’ve been a Junior Support Analyst for three weeks now. I’ve been answering emails, calls, and live chat queries through a ticketing system, which is new to me. It keeps me on my toes a lot! Literally! There’s still a lot to learn as I’ve yet to gain access to most of the tools used by the IT department. I’m thankful for the traineeship as I can put things I’ve learned into use, i.e. the company I work for uses a lot of Virtual Machines for different purposes; also, there tends to be a lot of software/hardware issues (printers, monitors, laptops and phone mail not working). Traineeship has geared me to resolve these issues. I plan on staying at the company for the long term and hope to specialize in an area like cloud computing or network security.