In this “Behind the Screens” Meet Oscar Dunning from the Personic team, who has recently attained his NVQ accreditation.
Firstly Oscar, congratulations on completing your NVQ, that’s a fantastic achievement! Can you tell us a bit about your journey?
This year long qualification hasn’t been easy; I enjoyed learning through working and the other techs at Personic have been more than accommodating, meanwhile the monthly lecture was hard work and draining. In addition, the ridged requirements for the end point assessment, was difficult.
“Watching Oscar navigate his NVQ journey has been nothing short of inspiring. It’s clear that his hard work and ever-growing knowledge are not only paying off for him, but also strengthening our entire team here at Personic.”
Les, Director at Personic
What inspired you to pursue a career in IT?
I’ve always been fascinated with computers having interacted with them from a young age, mostly for video games. Regular moments in my life of helping family with technology, combined with me challenging myself to build my own PC (and ultimately succeeding) lead me to pursue a path to utilise this knowledge further. Admittedly I regret not taking this path sooner.
What does a typical day at Personic look like?
It’s a lot of problem solving while balancing customer interaction where the problems fit into one of 4 categories:
- Straightforward: “Can you give this person folder permissions?”
- Convoluted: When a request makes no sense and you have to extrapolate what the customer wants through interactions and IT knowledge.
- Straightforward at first then Convoluted: When a request appears simple but uncovers a web of problems which need fixing.
- Convoluted at first then Straightforward: This one time I’d spent over an hour on the phone and PC trying to work out why a customer’s label printer wasn’t printing anything. I and multiple other technicians attempted to fix the issue but all attempts including reinstalling the drivers and software failed. Turns out he’d put in regular labels as opposed to thermal labels in the THERMAL LABEL PRINTER.😆
Outside of work and technology, what hobbies or interests do you enjoy that might surprise your colleagues?
Aside from building, upgrading, and maintaining my own custom PC I’ve recently become interested in 3D printing. I’ve had a resin printer for roughly 2 years, and I’ve used it to print models for games like D&D. More recently I’ve picked up a cheaper filament printer as this will allow me to create more mechanical models (as opposed to the highly detailed resin models).
Oscar, we wanted to thank you for your time and sharing your journey with us, good luck on your next chapter and, we look forward to seeing some of the 3D printed objects that you make!