Littlefish Service Desk Administrator Holly Palmer has been nominated as a finalist in the ‘Young ITSM Professional of The Year’ category at the ITSMF Professional Service Management Awards 2018.
The award recognises individuals under the age of 30 who have demonstrated “outstanding levels of achievement, ability, team support, rapid progress or business impact in the early years of their ITSM career” and who “promise great potential for future success”.
We caught up with Holly ahead of this evening’s awards, to find out what working at Littlefish is like for a young IT professional, how her role has developed, and what advice she has for others who are either starting out in, or want to join, the IT industry.
Q. What does ITSM mean to you?
A. ITSM for me focuses mainly on the operations side, with involvement in the transition of projects and monitoring performance day to day to find areas for improvement.
Q. Why is the award important to you?
A. It was a complete surprise for me and I was nervous at first, but once I started working on my presentation and actually thought about what I had achieved in seventeen months, it started to sink in how important it was to me. I have worked hard, made mistakes, learnt from them, been thrown in at the deep end and had to grow up quickly at times – but it’s all been worth it. So an award to demonstrate this progress is very important to me – because when I meet challenges in the future, this award will give me greater confidence in my ability to overcome them.
Q. What did entering the award involve?
A. I was nominated by a colleague who wrote a statement, and I was selected to attend a finalist day in Reading. I had to complete a 10 minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of questions about my professional development.
Q. Do you know who you are competing against in the finals?
A. I know the names of the other finalists and the IT companies they work for, but I have avoided researching them too much, because there is nothing more I can do now that would improve my chances and it will only add to my nerves!
Q. What does your role involve?
A. My role is really varied. Originally back in 2016 I was assigning the Service Desk and desktop engineers tickets and generating daily reports, but within five months I was managing major incidents. Since then, as well as managing those responsibilities I tend to work wherever I am needed; I’ve had input in service improvements (Littlefish Service Desk, customer toolsets and 3rd party processes), managing policies and procedures, reporting, and new software roll outs. I’ve also developed an awareness for other projects in the wider business, monitoring their potential future impact on the Service Desk and preparing for this.
Q. What is the best thing about your job?
A. Working with people – whether that is discussing project roll outs, service improvements, working on individual performance or supplier meetings. Also, seeing your hard work pay off, when small improvements make a collectively large impact on service improvement, is really rewarding.
Q. What is working in the IT industry really like?
A. I really enjoy it – it’s challenging and I’m constantly learning. I’m building up knowledge of the IT industry and especially IT terminology which wasn’t my strength. I’d be bored if I wasn’t constantly developing – but at Littlefish I am.
Q. What advice would you give to other young people wanting to embark on an IT career?
A. To pursue it. If you genuinely are interested and if you’re not sure what career to go into, I would definitely give it a shot. I did a completely different degree and when I finished I didn’t know what I wanted to go into. Originally, I saw this as a temporary role while I decided what I wanted to do. But I gave it a chance, worked hard, and really began to progress, and I enjoy working in IT. I’d also remind people that not all IT support careers are technical based, which I wasn’t fully aware of.
Regardless of the outcome of this year’s Young ITSM Professional of The Year, reaching the finals is an incredible achievement for Holly, and fitting recognition of the efforts she makes to continually improve service quality for Littlefish customers.
#PeopleMatter
