STL has long pursued workplace excellence by seeking the best talent regardless of gender, ethnicity or creed – but, we admit, it hasn’t always been easy to find quality female professionals who want to work in our male-dominated sector.
So, we’re especially delighted to introduce you to our newest Help Desk Support Operator, Nazia Kausar. Along with long-time STL superwoman Toni Carter, Nazia is proving how valuable gender-diversity is to every team.
Meet our newest support operator
Nazia’s career began in at Blackburn and Darwen Council before she sought a more glamourous role at Debenhams Beauty and Perfume department – where she discovered a talent for eyelash extensions and brow tinting.
A naturally creative spirit, she is constantly called on for interior design makeovers of her relatives’ homes and relaxes by nurturing natural designs in her garden too.
However, she was captivated by her brother’s anecdotes from his job in cyber security and became determined to pursue a career in IT. Her first break was as an IT analyst at the now-defunct Arcadia Group, which owned ubiquitous high street stores like Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Topshop and more. This exposed her to a vast array of hardware, software, applications and devices from tills and scanners to laptops, iPads and printers and PDQ machines as well as the network infrastructure and phone system.
As in wholesale, these systems were business-critical and she learnt to juggle the IT support needs of numerous internal customers – across the UK and as far afield as the US, Germany and France. Working remotely, her team handled everything from printer malfunctions to discrepancies in the daily cash accounts reconciliation which were often due to data upload issues.
After Arcadia folded, she took a six-month contract working on 6G, which gave her an insight into emerging technologies and experience of customer site visits.
She then worked for an IT services company focusing on the hospitality sector, where she increased her experience of the Citrix enterprise solution, VPN-based phone systems, PDQ payment systems and POS systems.
As fun and stimulating as this was, she didn’t much enjoy the night shifts and was excited when offered the opportunity to progress her career at STL.
She loves the company’s continuous learning ethos and new practice of Support site visits. She is also enjoying the friendly, down-to-earth atmosphere – although she jokes that the increased feminine presence has somewhat improved the quality of the team banter.
She believes the diverse team’s dynamic helps minimise clients’ stress in the event of a system fault, which facilitates a swift resolution.
She says, ‘I find it so therapeutic to put my hands in mud or paint, and see a shrub bloom or a room come to life because of my efforts. And it’s the same at STL’s Help Desk: I get a great deal of satisfaction from finding creative solutions to an issue and helping a customer’s business to thrive.’