From Support to ServiceNow
My journey to entering the ServiceNow Developer space was a long twisty path, but I am glad to have arrived. I am currently a ServiceNow Solution Architect at a partner. Prior to joining my current company however, my official role was at a Help Desk. While at the Help Desk though I fulfilled many other roles also – ServiceNow admin, ServiceNow developer, Exchange admin, Security admin, etc. I am very happy to have found my spot in the ServiceNow eco-system.
I was born and raised in the Midwest, oldest of three girls. I was fortunate growing up. Both my parents worked. My mother worked with Mainframe computers, and I always remember there being a computer in the house. Our first computer was an Apple IIe, however, the tech was there from the get-go and my sisters and I were encouraged to learn and grow with whatever area in academics we were interested in.
I went to Iowa State University in 2001, I started out as an Industrial Engineering major. Through various circumstances I switched majors after freshman year to Biology. I’ve always loved Science and all things STEM. In college most of my friends were Computer Engineering or Computer Science majors. I knew computers and tech, took some electives in them but was sure my future lay in a science lab somewhere.
I worked food service through high school and most of college. My last year of college I worked at the Help Desk for teachers and students needing tech support with university systems. Here’s a tip that no one tells you until it’s too late… If you are a Life Sciences major and want to have a job in your degree area when you graduate, work in a lab during college. I did not do this because I was paying for school myself and lab jobs do NOT pay well, and I thought that there’s no way washing lab glassware could count as experience.
When I graduated with my biology degree, I was able to get a job in a lab. It was very entry level, and I didn’t even need my degree to get it. Then six months later, my fiancée received a permanent job offer in the next state over and we decided to move. He had been working at this job for 3 months, so we knew this was a possibility. I spent those 3 months looking any job in the area I could think I qualified for. Then my fiancée told me about a job opening at his company for a Help Desk Technician and helped me set up an interview.
The manager said that my Food Service experience impressed him more than my history with computers or my previous help desk experience. After my own observations I agree, he said that Customer Service is a mindset that can’t really be taught. People learn this on their own in life and their past experiences show their success at learning it. He also believed that anyone who wanted to learn would not stay in a help desk job for more than 18 months if they wanted. I ended up taking the Help Desk job because of pay and what looked like room to grow in the company.
Unfortunately, he retired about six months after hiring me and I ended up in that position for close to fifteen years. My fiancée was on a server team, and I had friends on various level three support teams in the company. I would constantly bug them to teach me new things. If there was a project that they needed a Help Desk person on I would volunteer.
Through the years I ended up picking up responsibilities from other teams as I learned things and people left but, I could never manage to get a manager to promote me to a full-time position outside of my Help Desk role. I heard various excuses from different managers, they need someone with more enterprise experience, I need a computer science degree first, or the most infuriating one, I’m one of their best Help Desk people.
In 2010, we had started looking at a new ticket taking system. I was skeptical of ServiceNow, mostly because it was cloud based and we were in a rural area where cloud, did not always seem like a great solution since sometimes the network went down. Once ServiceNow was decided on I was picked to represent my team on the project. I quickly saw the potential. It was far more user and administratively friendly than other software I had used.
Once implemented we ended up with 2 admins in the company. Since I was on the project and one of the admins was my manager when ServiceNow was implemented, I asked if I could help. They gave me admin permissions and a few tasks here and there.
This didn’t add up to much until five years later when we were down to one admin on ServiceNow for the company, and this was not her only job in the company. I was slowly given more and more development and admin work. I would periodically talk to my manager and the admin about becoming a full-time developer since I was slowly spending more and more of my time working on ServiceNow, yet there was constantly no budget, or I didn’t have the certifications. I started casually applying to ServiceNow developer positions while holding out hope that they would come around.
In the spring of 2020, I received an email from ServiceNow Learning that the ServiceNow Fundamentals self-lead course would be offered for free and anyone who completed it by April 1st would also receive a free voucher. I saw this was my chance. I was on furlough and decided to spend daytime hours getting my certification, with the support of my fiancée. I was able to pass my CSA in April of 2020. My company still did not have a full-time ServiceNow position for me, so I went in Search of a full-time ServiceNow position.
Once I had my certification in hand, the interviews were less hard to come by. Within three months I had a job with my current employer. I started as a Platform Engineer. Now after a year I am a Solution Architect specializing in ITOM. I have worked on Portal, Service Catalog, and ITSM but, ITOM is where I am most interested in ServiceNow. After working closely with various IT Operations areas, I feel I understand their needs and flows best and can help the most in ITOM.
I’ve learned many tips for life and work along the way. Apply to any job you might want even if you don’t fit all the qualifications, most job listings are a wish list not a requirements list. Everyone feels like they don’t know enough at times. No one will advocate for you but YOU! People may say they have your best interests at heart, but they don’t know you and they aren’t you. I’m not saying people are bad or liars. (I’m not saying they aren’t either) But, even the best person, who wants only the best for you, is approaching it from what they are thinking and feeling.
I am so glad to have found my current spot. I’m thankful for the ServiceNow community and its openness. Just remember to fight for yourself, find your support structure, and continue to learn!
