Case studies: Maintenance engineer and team leader: Tom Murphy

Tom decided on a career change and had an interest in technology, specifically relating to IT. He had originally studied a finance degree, however he was not interested in pursuing this area of work any further as he found this quite boring.

Before gaining entry to IT maintenance engineer I lacked the qualifications necessary so took a number of professional based qualifications to help me gain employment in this area. I studied a number of Microsoft qualifications including MCP and MCSEs, and also completed CCNA Cisco training to give me an all round knowledge in IT engineering.

In terms of advice on working as an IT maintenance engineer, a can-do attitude is very important, a willingness to learn and to 'get your hands dirty'. There is a lot of pressure, especially when you first start, and a lot to learn. However, the knowledge can be gained from learning on the job and it is not that difficult.

My degree in accounting did not directly help me in my current role, so I undertook professional qualifications to improve my career prospects.

I initially started off providing IT support which, although I did not enjoy it a great deal, helped me learn a wide range of IT engineering skills in quite a short time. I currently work for a university where I have been working for just over four years.

I was initially employed as a support IT engineer, where I was a jack of all trades, maintaining the IT systems, installing new equipment and keeping up to date with trends in technology. I gained experience in hardware, software and networking and was then successfully promoted to senior IT engineer, where I gained exposure to more complex issues that arose within the IT systems at the university.

What I really enjoyed with both these positions was learning about all the new technologies; you keep on doing this all the time, and also you see the results and the impact new technology has had on your organisation.

I was recently promoted to team leader and am now in charge of eight members of technical staff. My job is to oversee the maintenance of the IT systems, ensuring that faults and problems are being dealt with by the technicians and overseeing the faults that are logged and seeing if there is any underlying problem.

I give feedback to senior management on the progress of the systems and raise any technical or maintenance issues. I also help the technicians based on my experience with diagnosing faults and maintaining and upgrading equipment and delegate jobs to the specialists in my team, helping them develop their knowledge.

I really enjoy everything about this job, as I get to do such a broad range of tasks, I get involved with more technical areas with the systems manager and can interact with him and share ideas. I can them sit with the technicians and work out solutions to the installation of new technology and other complex issues that arise. I am also involved in making more strategic decisions with my senior manager. In future, I am keen to develop my management skills and continue my professional development in this area.