Honk honk!

Posted: February 23rd, 2006 | Author: Michael R. Murphy | Filed under: Career | 1 Comment »

Everybody needs a picture of a tuba on their website

Luckily I’ve only looked for a new job a few times in my life. When I did,I read everything there was to read about the topic. Some of it was good advice,some of it was truly terrible advice. There was one thing however that I read over and over again. My dad beat this into my head as well.

Toot your own horn! Nobody else is going to do it for you.

I think those were my dad’s exact words. Tooting my own horn isn’t something I’ve ever been very comfortable with. When I even think about it,my head fills with the faces of all the pretentious windbags I’ve known. I guess there’s a fine line between tooting and bragging and I prefer to err on the side of caution. Anyhow,that brings me to the point of this post.

Today The Student Loan Corporation held their quarterly employee recognition celebration and the web application I’ve written plays a big part in it. Because of all my hard work and the wonderful job I did on the application,I received two awards today.

The first is called The People’s Choice. This award requires approval at the Director level and was presented to me by Mike Reardon,CEO and Chairman of the Board. Only 7 other employees received this award this quarter. I was nominated by the project sponsor and here is the text of the award:

Mike came into our business at a critical time in our project. We gave him our requirements and an aggressive date for implementation. Mike reveiwed the BRD and developed a prototype for the team to review. As we went along some of our requirements changed and became more complex. Mike always remained calm and came back to the team with a quality product. This was all completed within our timeframe to implement. Mike has given 110% to getting Great Performances back up with all of the enhancements. Feedback from our users has been fantastic. They appreciate the ease in using the site and the new reporting functionality. It has been a pleasure working with Mike on Phase 1. I look forward to completing Phase 2.

The other award goes to teams whose projects have had a significant impact on the business and my teammates and myself received this award for our work on the employee recognition program.

Along with certificates and some financial appreciation comes company-wide fame. Not to bad for my first quarter at the company.

There’s no i in team however,so as long as I’m taking credit,I’d like to give some as well. Thanks to everybody on the team for volunteering their time and doing a wonderful job. Especially Jaime who’s attention to detail and organizational skills have kept us on track and JC for being so good at his job. His thorough requirements gathering has made my job easyier.

Now let’s talk about what I can do at your company: