The majority of my working career has been in the field of IT, working primarily as a COBOL programmer on application development teams. After a successful eight years in this field, five of which were with Marks & Spencer I had the desire to leave London and satisfy my creative skills. I therefore moved to Brighton and studied a degree course in English Literature, in which I acquired a 2.1 and found the entire experience very fulfilling.
I was aware throughout my time at university that my previous skills were becoming more sought after due to the approach of the year 2000. I therefore decided to return briefly to COBOL programming for financial reasons as well as using my skills to gain the experience of working abroad.
Between October 1998 and February 2000 I was living in Amsterdam working as an IT contract programmer. I would hope that my work experience shows evidence of versatility where the need to pick up new skills, coupled with ability to cope with a change of country, demonstrates an ability for resilience and adaptation to new working environments.
Towards the end of my time in Amsterdam I taught myself the various software skills used to build websites. I am currently working freelance building websites with the desire to enter this area of IT within a London or Southeast based company. I am finding greater fulfillment with web design than my previous role in IT as it allows both greater use of my creative skills and provides a greater sense of satisfaction by providing a very visual and useful end product that I have worked on from beginning to end.
