Bank of Montreal

While working at Scotia Bank, I activated my Resume on the Internet and was contacted by Paradigm Solutions with the chance to contract for four months with the BMO at First Canadian Place, Toronto.

I was working nights at Scotia and had my interview set for 7:30am. The hiring manager was Katherine Grishaber who always started work early so the time was excellent for both of us. The position was on the Field Services team as a Senior LAN Technical Analyst. With all my experience as a Desktop Support and Rollout Engineer, Katherine decided to offer me the position. Greg Castonguay, the Team Lead at the time, also sat in on the interview.

Staring in July of 2007, I settled well into the team of twelve. We had to support desktops in the FCP building and at a satellite site not ten minutes walk from FCP.

I ended up spending most of my time at the satellite site on various projects while still supporting users at FCP and multiple remote users around Canada.

As my contract was coming to an end in November of 2007, Katherine and Greg asked me to go permanent. Having enjoyment with the work and people on the team and at the various sites, I accepted and became a full time employee.

Six months after becoming a FTE, my wife and I bought a house in Innisfil which made my commute from door to work, two hours each way.

Sitting on the GO train every day was relaxing and the odd sleep-fest occurred. If I snored, and I probably did, the other passengers did not say anything. Maybe it was because I was snoring "in Scottish"..!!

After eighteen months of desktop support, I decided it was time to try another part of IT work. I transferred on to servers.

I miss the interaction with users but sometimes you have to sacrifice one part of your job to move on.