Allow me to quickly introduce myself: My name is Jenn Buckley, M Ed, MBA, MCCT, CPTD and sole proprietor of J Buckley Consulting, LLC. What's with all the initials? Well, I've been collecting them! See, originally, I started out with a degree in secondary education, social sciences but was unable to find a job as a social studies/history/economics/etc teacher when I graduated college. I worked a lot of temporary jobs trying to figure out when and where my "career" was going to start. Until the day I answered a job advertisement in the newspaper ("newspapers", how quaint!) for an "applications instructor". And that's how my career began.
I wasn't sure what to expect but... I loved teaching software to adult learners! Windows OS, DOS, Microsoft Office applications, Wordperfect, Adobe products, Lotus Notes, FileMaker Pro, Project, Visio, FrameMaker, QuarkExpress, QuickBooks - I really enjoyed it. And, I was good at it. It's funny what you remember, but even back then, I knew it wasn't ever going to be a long career because it was a very limited role. And then something funny happened.
Clients asked our Sales Reps for someone who could help train their employees on home-grown, internal applications. The developers couldn't seem to break down how the application was supposed to work for the business and the business couldn't understand the developers when they answered questions. Everyone was frustrated with each other, the company had spent months and a ton of money building this new application that no one could figure out how to use. Enter.... me. Turns out, I make a pretty good translator! I was able to speak enough "IT" to the developers to learn what the application was supposed to do and I could speak enough "business" to learn what the questions and issues were to go back to IT. I then wrote it all down, collected some business use cases, and voila! A training outline with exercises was born. Everybody was happy. I did that for awhile and then the next funny thing happened...
Companies then started asking for custom training on commercial software that "sort of" came with some training but not really. See, when a company buys a product like SAP (or Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc.), they train a bunch of employees and call it a day. But what happens when those employees move on, retire, quit, or otherwise are unavailable to train their replacements? Ruh-roh!
Apparently, I'm not afraid of software, not afraid to click the links, push the buttons, read the help files (if there were any), and play with the menus. And, I'm very careful to document what I've done so that I can undo it (especially in a live, production environment). So I'd take whatever documentation the company had, talk to as many people as I could to get a sense of their business processes, sit down, and write up the difference between the "out of the box, plain" version of the software and the customized version that the company had altered to suit their needs. If you guessed that I was designing training, you get a gold star! I wrote up participant guides, exercises, instructor manuals, job aids, presentations, the whole works. And then, I taught it.
And all the while, I was still teaching software applications and I still loved it. But, I knew that at some point, there wouldn't be as many new people to train on Microsoft Office and Adobe products and the changes from version to version were incremental so it wasn't required to take a class on the latest version when it came out. At some point, the market would start to dry up. And the travel was starting to get old.
So I looked for a corporate training position and found one that focused on customer service, curriculum design, and some project management. And in the interest of learning, I registered in a Master's program to broaden by skills. And the best part? My new job paid for it! I swear, tuition reimbursement is a hidden benefit that more people don't know about yet should take advantage of. So, I earned my Master's in adult education and curriculum design and started taking on more project management and process improvement tasks. I learned quite a bit and thought I was ready for the next step until...
I was told that I couldn't possibly be promoted because my degrees and background were "only" in education and what did I know about "business" anyway? Well, that was offensive. I'd been working in business and customer service for a decade, working directly with clients (internal and external) to understand their needs and delivering a product or service. That's sales, that's business analysis, that's customer focus, that's growth to the bottom line, that's meeting the goals of the department and company. It occurred to me that the fundamental problem was how leadership perceived my education, which was as "education" and not as "business-y" enough. So I asked a critical question: If I were to apply for an MBA, would my company pay for it? The answer was a "Yes!" so that's what I did.
I then changed jobs just before the market turned during the Great Recession, but made sure that my new company would cover my tuition as a benefit (they did) and I earned my MBA. I worked on some massive projects, worked and learned from a ton of coworkers and colleagues, and practiced my skills. A few years later, disillusioned with the corporate world, I decided I'd much rather be my own boss and started J Buckley Consulting, LLC. I've since earned my Certified Professional in Talent Development credential via ATD, my Modern Classroom Certified Trainer (MCCT) from Logical Operations, and have picked up some new skills and other certifications, which is something I'll continue to do. I am a strong believer in life-long learning after all because I wouldn't be here if I didn't!
So, here I am twelve years later (yikes!!) and am happy with the decisions and direction I'm going. I've had quite a bit of fun along the way and love the variation in what I do. Every contract/project I take on is different: the people, the environment, the work, the skills needed, the creative problem-solving, the constraints. And yet, it's that variation that has me thinking back to my days as just an applications instructor when I wondered if it was possible to make a career of it. Yes, yes you can, but you have to be willing to do new things too, learn new skills, apply yourself in different ways and that was something I couldn't have known back then. These days, I do still teach the occasional software course but I also work as a technical writer, instructional designer, project manager of learning projects, and jack-of-most-learning & development-trades.
Well, so much for a quick introductory post! :-)
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