Professional Interview

I talked to Angie Walsh, she used to be the IT Academy Teacher, that my little sister had. She now works as a CRM systems administrator at Cetera. This means that she takes care of the customer relationship management system. This is a system that allows the handling of sales, customer service, finance and accounting. Some our her activities within this system are making changes to forms, writing reports, fixing data errors, applying patches, upgrading, writing interfaces to other systems, handling security, and monitoring performance. It was interesting to find out that this system is a Microsoft product, that is housed in the cloud. It’s very cool that she gets to work directly with Microsoft to make sure their system is functioning correctly. This also peaks my interest of cloud computing and it will be something to look into.

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Hearing about Mrs.Walsh’s career path was insightful. She started with a bachelor’s degree of computer information systems. She started work as a computer programmer and then quickly got the opportunity to be a database administrator. She continued this job for about 13 years and then decided to stay home to raise kids for a bit. Then she took a technology teaching job in Dublin and continued for 9 years, evening going back to get a Masters in education. Finally, she got offered her current job because she had students there for internships.

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It was nice to see that she was able to do so many jobs and even take time to raise a family. This is important for me because I hope to have many jobs in my career and to possibly go to teaching as well. Mrs.Walsh also talked about how her current job is similar to her job as a database administrator. The software and databases have changes some but the concepts and actually work is about the same. This is important to me to hear because the concepts I will learn through my Computer Science degree will be the same concepts used in most of my jobs.

Angie Walsh also gave me some general advice. The first was to explore all the different career paths and job opportunities out there, from security to business analysts there is much that can be done with a Computer Science degree. The next advice is that as a female is the tech industry I shouldn’t let anyone intimidate me. I should understand that I am smart and capable. She also suggests that I find opportunities to job shadow. This would allow me to understand what aspect of technology I want to pursue and also how different companies work. I will definitely try to implement this advice, as finding what and where I want to work can seem daunting. The finally advice was to find a mentor, a female in the field who is a similar aspect of technology as me and can help guide me.

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Overall talking to Angie Walsh was very helpful, I don’t think I have talked to a female working in technology. It was nice to get her point of view, especially her career path that is long and winding, that includes many accepts that I want out of my path including family and teaching. Her advice is insightful and I will try to implement as much as possible into my career and life.