Since the start of the year, my full-time position has been evolving.
A previous employee in our department was charged with fraud last fall. As a result, many of the policies in our department needed to change. Our department is a small (four employees) IT department in one of the faculties at the University of Lethbridge. Previous to these fraud charges, a single person controlled purchasing, receiving and inventory.
In the last six months, I have been made steward over all the technological equipment used by our faculty. This amounts to hundreds of items on three campuses with a total value of roughly $500,000. As steward, I have been responsible for auditing all of the equipment we have on all three campuses, reconciling these records with those in the central Financial Services department, developing a new policy manual with the financial analyst and the department supervisor.
In addition, I am also responsible for receiving all new shipments, tagging them and recording their details (serial number, P/O info, etc) in our tracking software; managing salvaging old equipment; tracking purchases and flow of consumables (such as printer toner); filing copies of receipts for purchases made with professional supplement funds.
As a result of these new responsibilities, there has been a shift in my duties. As the responsibilities and steward position evolve, less of my time is focused on web design. This is not a bad thing necessarily; after all, working on the same website for five years can leave much to be desired. Also, working on the same website for five years has stifled my enthusiasm for web design in general.
Because of all of this, I have come to realise that I do not think my career future is in web design. For that matter, I do not see my career future being tied to any single industry. While I do believe I have strong skills in web design, the industry does not allow me capitalise on my many other skills. The new responsibilities I have do allow me to do just that.
Acting as steward and working on these small projects these past few months have helped bring enthusiasm into my work life; an enthusiasm that has been gone for a long time. In fact, it has given me hope that I can actually take my career somewhere.
As a result of all of this, I am undergoing a personal rebranding effort. I am analysing how I am branding myself and my skills currently and doing what I can to change this in order to highlight my strong skills and accomplishments. There will probably be a few changes at HotPepper.ca over the next few weeks as I come to some conclusions. I’m not sure what the future of this blog specifically will be, but I think things will definitely be different here in the near future.
I fell good about this decision, and I hope to see myself better off.