hello and welcome to the service Ducks podcast I hum co-host James downs and I'm Rush here and we're here to chat about all things servicenow everyday life as a service now consultant new features implementation successes and perhaps more entertaining when it doesn't go quite so well welcome back to the service doctor podcast Russ so what you've been up to this week what have I been up to I have um I'm assuming I can say anything it doesn't have to be service now related nope I have been doing I've been to London and the hyper the highlight of my week is I went into Waterloo Station and I don't know if you've seen these but in London you can now rent um those scooters electric scooters whoa so so and this is genuinely the highlight of my week um and I love telling my kids when I got home but come out of Waterloo Station there's like a a parking Bay and you use an app um I think it was lime um other scooter providers are available by the way but you can um scan your app you do your ID and you get an electric scooter and you can whiz around London so that's what I did um this week um highly recommend um the other thing I haven't done this week but I'm going to do so tomorrow tomorrow is Saturday and I am doing a race I've got a running race um coming up very nice what sort of distance that is a 10k race um I am thoroughly unprepared and it's going to be cold uh wet and windy so um I'm expecting a good one but yeah yeah see that turns off most people doesn't it when you talk about running outside I think anytime I see any bad weather I'm definitely a uh a fair weather Runner myself yeah no it's more of a mental game um absolutely but yeah that's the plan uh for me so that's something I've done and something I'm going to do but um yeah what about you what are you what have you been up to this week couple of interesting things so off the back end of last week we finished off a really cool hackathon so I led a team yes developing a solution to fight the transport emissions in Sofia in Bulgaria so something completely different and you know using servicenow we're able to come up with a solution to um uh come back to people to say hey for this particular Journey you're going to use up this particular emissions and the air quality is this so it was a really good experience I learned Lots along the way it was the first hackathon I've actually been a member of anyway so that was pretty interesting we had our final in uh on Friday last Friday um we made the final I'd like to say there's over a hundred you know applicants but I don't know there was only 15 teams that made the final we made the final um but the biggest issue on the final was that everything was been speaking in uh Bulgarian so obviously we had no idea what was going on I don't know what the winning entrance was no absolutely not that wasn't part of our solution so um yeah that was interesting um we didn't we didn't make the top three unfortunately so there was no prize but um either way the team learned lots of things along the way yes still a good experience though absolutely and actually something internal in our organization we're looking to build up a lot more hackathons to just help the learning process for some of our junior members as well that's good fun they're good yeah here's the key question would you recommend it to a friend doing a hackathon what do you think they used to have about um I don't know if you've seen this on LinkedIn about a browser um and the question is would you recommend this web browser to a friend and someone said I need you to understand that people don't go around talking about web browsers no is operating systems wasn't it yeah I won't operate I won't recommend an operating system to a friend yeah no 100 it was definitely a fun experience a good it's out of an order you know it's not a usual sort of like project so you get all together you you know you plan these things out and um if you win you win if you don't then it's just a good learning experience all round so um 100 yeah that's good I'm I'm jealous that beats my scooter story I quite like your scooter story because I've seen those in the only likes of you know Tenerife and places like that we can just scoot it down the uh down the shore but um I didn't even realize I hadn't told you about that either I saved it for the podcast didn't I surprise me I like it uh okay so anyway enough enough waffle um people have come here to listen to us talk about servicenow stuff um so I suppose we'd best get on topic so what are we talking about this time what are we talking about this time we're just talking about our Journeys um so how we actually made it how we got to where we are today in the profession that we love okay so our servicenow Journeys how we went from start to now I get you I get you okay so why don't you kick us off what about you how did you start where are you and what lessons have you got for people so my role today is a advisor solution architect so basically I'll provide technical design and oversight for our more complex Enterprise customers um I work a lot with the pre-sales teams um on large deals but essentially assure that our customers get value from the platform is basically my job um but how I got here was basically my my journey started by working on help desks um all the way in the highlands of Scotland that's where I grew up you probably can't tell from my accent whatsoever um but uh that's where I started how many service desks were there in the Highland there wasn't many it companies yeah I think everyone got to work for the same company so yeah anyone that I went to University with was all all went the same way it was everyone's first job basically all right okay but yeah not all of my kind of working habits came from there so you know it was incredibly busy um you had to have a good kind of like you know hard working ethos to be able to work there but um it gave you all the kind of perspectives and you're working and you know resetting passwords for the likes of coal miners and you know random people like the other people love the password reset oh yes um so I worked up from there basically I worked from help desk to help desk and supported different different people in the NHS as well but eventually found my way into itsm Consulting doing on-premise installs and um general you know running process workshops and covering requirements a natural progression for the service desk you think um I think so the likes of application support which was a bit more technical okay because you can either go um infrastructure or kind of software well you're on the service desk and you know not nine times out of 10 but you've got those two Avenues really haven't you um of course yes you can go more Technical and go into more like desktop side support or um networks and that sort of thing I wasn't particularly interested in that very much um it wasn't actually where the money was for me at the time either so learning about this kind of Avenue of consultancy and I liked working with people as well and customers so you know working in that kind of Consulting environment where you're there face to face and get to experience things with the customers um and you get to have that sense of where they've found your time valuable yeah um which which makes you feel good obviously um so yeah so this is where my Consulting experience started from into itsm and where eventually moved across to fruition Partners in 2015. was it fruition Partners though yes it was literally yeah what was it called before fruition Partners what was it called drop a comment in the comments below if there are comments below if you want to send an email in but it was literally right after the Takeover okay okay yeah um I think I was very one of the first people to join fruition Partners as fruition Partners in the UK um but yes I've worked my way up from there basically where um sorry I keep interrupting I need to let you talk you know um but that's where I first met you isn't it the fruition Partners it wasn't Leeds yeah you were you were a customer and I turned up at sight to meet you to influence on Discovery you did do Discovery more on that in another podcast I I feel like coming how did James and Russ meet no yes anyway yes um Dublin was actually the first release I worked on which seems like an absolute age you go you know you look at it back now and you're like oh my God is that really what it looked like but I joined with you know no scripting skills at all um I came to fruition Partners as a process consultant with just you know itsm core process skills to be able to run workshops I didn't know servicenow I didn't I wasn't an admin um so I just came to it just as to be able to you know get requirements and learn on the job essentially so it's a junior so I just wanna I just want to pick on that there and it might be interesting for for people listening here is is you come from a service desk background and you've gone for an interview at fruition and you come in from a process point of view um specifically around service now how did that interview play out how did that conversation go you know I'm guessing it's a lot different than than happens now right yeah very much so it was very much the questions were were centered around ITIL everything was around ITIL everything was around ITIL um you know implementations and things like that that's what 90 of our work was back then so the question was more around you know oh what would you advise if a you know an incident was escalating and things like that was very much around best practice around ITIL V3 um and I of course can answer those questions straight off the bat and you know it wasn't servicenow specific so I couldn't say this is how you would do it in service now yeah this is best practice and that was exactly what they were looking for at that particular point of time they wanted people to be the experts of this is what the process is so you adapt to the process rather than um you know anything that is not best practice absolutely I think I think nowadays there's an element of service now questioning isn't there in that in the um in the interviewing technique when it comes to process Consultants or bpcs yeah absolutely yeah yeah so essentially I worked more up from being a process consultant up to moving across to the technical teams once I found out I was a little bit Technical and had that bit of a background I could just you know hone in on those skills and as you said before where we met you're doing itom so on pigeonholden to doing it on Discovery implementations such a funny term pigeonholed pigeon we should say that was pigeonholed my picture if anyone knows if anyone knows where that comes from and of course um sorry no that's fine yeah I've obviously worked my way up from there so just through pure grit determination and going back to what I said right at the beginning about having that hard-working background and being able to work with customers and get good feedback from customers that's how I've been able to propel myself up into the obviously to the higher roles doing seeing your technical consultant and then eventually architect so um and that that's a hopefully um well it is to me an interesting Journey you've been on there and there's some key learnings I think to take away from anyone I'm going to put you on the spot three things right what three learnings if the people listening to this and say right okay this is James's Journey how do I replicate that or what did he learn or what mistakes did he make along the way that he would go back and change so what three things if I ask you um what's what's your advice as a veteran in the service and airspace for me you're allowed three things so the three things I would suggest is obviously knowing which role that you're applying for because at that time I was applying for a process consultant so the fact was at that point is I knew what I was getting in for so my my prep for the likes of the um the interview was purely around knowing best practice around ITIL okay um nowadays like you've mentioned before is completely different it's not just it anymore it's it's grown a lot further beyond that you have to know the best practice around HR and you know hi Tom and so that's the first thing the second thing I would say is um it's all about personality and you and how you come across to the likes of customers and how you communicate yes you specifically [Laughter] how Russ comes across the people is how you should talk we should talk about an interview yeah we'll let you know communicate communication is obviously extremely important and for you to be able to sit in front of customers and have difficult conversations is important um so you know purely just working on those communication skills um is going to be essential for any service now role I believe that's interesting soft skills okay and your third and final bit of advice slash uh imparting of knowledge and this is where I went wrong right so I should have absolutely have done more prep in terms of understanding both fruition Partners the business as well as servicenow so I did not do anywhere near enough preparation about just understanding them as businesses where they are today where they're going to understanding the tool sets there is more than enough capabilities at the moment for you to kind of spin up your own personal development instance to have a play and to understand it and there's enough you know now learning documentation out there that you can build these skills up before you actually go for an interview I didn't do that I went wrong that's interesting that tells a story I think because that that is is essentially what we're saying is when you did land the gig there were times when you were put on the spot and perhaps weren't necessarily 100 prepared maybe yeah absolutely I was chucked straight on an admining course because I knew nothing we've we've all been there I think I remember one of my first um uh my first consultancy um projects I was asked to do Resource Management um I'd never done Resource Management before in my life and it was my second day in the job but you know I managed to get through it and the customer was happy um yeah but the fact that the service now is so vast right now there's no way possible you could know absolutely everything yeah and you know you could land any particular gig um and you have to have that kind of mentality of being able to prep for these projects uh that are coming up so that's the skills on itself that's awesome that's me foreign I guess we should turn the tides here and just look at um look at your journey yes please so where am I now so I am currently uh an independent uh contractor um that means I work for myself it's nice um but I work on behalf of um different partners um and for different customers right so I'm a technical consultant I should say so technical architect lead um more of a a technical capacity I'd say so that's where I'm at right now so I cover multiple roles there yeah where did I start so I start like you um this is interesting actually so like you I start from a service test background and you're gonna have to keep me on track here and keep your time because I'm going to go off on a tangent so I'm relying on you but I started off on the service desk and I I remember actually I begged and pleaded the recruitment agent I was doing sales jobs up until then and I was kind of in a rut didn't really know what I wanted to do um this is my 20s a bit bored a bit miserable um still am arguably but I begged and pleaded I wanted to go into the I.T industry so I begged and pleaded this um recruitment agents who got me a job as a service desk agent um so I joined um CityLink who no longer here anymore but I um I I joined as a service desk agent and I just worked really hard you know I didn't have any I didn't have an I.T background in the interview I didn't I almost well I didn't know what I was saying but I certainly didn't have a degree absolutely no degree in Computing just what I'd learned on a kind of a hobby level um and I just worked really hard um and the team I worked with if any of them are listening to were absolutely phenomenal um and I mean I don't mean technically phenomenal I just mean as a uni we worked really well together we all got on we met up afterward it was just a good team um and they really really helped me to learn um I.T um and what that means in in terms of you know communication skills um and some of you said as well in terms of how to communicate I was quite good at that point in communicating with customers so on the service desk I worked up pretty fast to being a team leader um and then I went to um to be a service desk manager and the global service desk manager so I worked my way up um relatively quickly um but it was just been working hard um dedication no family and kids at that time time so you can do that um and then I took on a Global Services manager role and the first conversation I had with the director was can I Implement servicenow globally so that was um I think we should do a podcast on this maybe because I've got some interesting learnings but um Implement service now globally that was my first touch point I think that was e Eureka was it Eureka yep um it might have been the one before it might have just been upgrade and I forget but yeah that was Eureka and um I kind of just fell in love with the platform this sounds really sad doesn't it I I because I started off technical begged and pleaded to go into a technical role and then started doing more people management when service now came along it allowed me to fall back into a bit more Technical and more consultancy so I was talking to the business about their requirements and also doing some of the technical delivery and I absolutely loved it shortly after I mean we had one of our partners um at the time was fruition Partners which is coincidentally how I met you so you came in as a partner and helped us do some Discovery stuff yeah um then I joined lightu I joined fruition Partners um the interview there um was interesting I went for a not not like you I went for a technical role through and through um and the interview was more um it was more of a gauge of my personality and God knows how but I made it through based on my personality and and previously I'd worked with the likes of you yourself do you tend to find because of these kind of like small circles around service now that it tends to be people the people that get hired at partners are people that you already know is it like you know you know it's a fairly small circle right that is a good question right and I was only talking to someone about this the other day that a few years back it was very much like that and you know like yourself there's lots of Partners about but you kind of know people at each partner right but anyone that's kind of new into the industry in the last few years that won't be the case I don't think because it's not a small community as it once was I think there's still an element of that but it's not certainly not as as abundant as it was before if that makes sense yeah um and the interview I actually had I remember um Paul cash it was at the time asked me um what could what can you offer the company I said well I can tell you 100 ways how to get it wrong and he was kind of well that's part of consultancy right um so yeah so I did fruition Partners I started off as technical consultant there I worked my way up to um team leader there um that became dxc as you know um and then I I went over to um another partner where um it was more kind of bespoke application development so I did that and then I decided and and you know what and this was so I was kind of in a um a technical lead technical architect capacity then and covered here and it kind of hit hard it you know like for most people but you know you're at home for what felt like two years I know it wasn't but it felt like two years right and I'd always had this kind of itch I needed to scratch to go and do my own thing to Go and Do Contracting and I've been going on for years even before so there was no times and I just decided look covered's hit um it kind of told me that you've got to kind of seize the moment and and make some I guess make some movements for yourself and put some dedication to more hard working um so that's what I did um and I've been doing that for uh just over a year now um absolutely loving it um and and you know multiple different projects I've been working on um all interesting yeah all varied yeah all varied yeah and I'm currently um you know kind of a again a lead capacity slash architect capacity um at a um a particular partner right now and that brings us to to where we are that's my journey yeah it was actually yes I do have a question for you so do you feel that you're happier being pigeonholed into doing no don't feel happy being pigeon doing technical consultancy doing the actual work and implementation itself rather than design an architecture would you rather that work doing design handing it over to right you know TC's to do the work or are you rather you know get your fingers do it do sort of thing no right this is this is the reason why we do a podcast together right because if it was just me talking I wouldn't think about things like that um so I'm glad you asked that question and that's one thing I want to make very very clear so I come from like I said I come from kind of um a service desk service desk manager background where I had to like you I learned ITIL and I did many of the foundation um sorry the intermediate courses of idle so my background like yourself is process so I find I can flick between process and Technical quite naturally yeah um and in fact if you if you were to give me a set of requirements say just go and do them I couldn't do it without challenging right um not so I'm going to sit there and challenge you if it's perfectly good story and reasonable you're not going to say anything are you but um I absolutely love getting involved in the process side understanding what people are trying to achieve why they're trying to achieve it um not just doing the technical side don't get me wrong I love getting my head in some code that sounds a bit weird but I do love that but no I I do like the process side and I like the design side I think every project that we embark on um there should be an element of the design again another podcast I'm fearing Mason make a note of that but there should be an element of design and I love doing that as well so to answer your question in a really waffely way is oh I enjoy it all and I'm quite lucky I can kind of turn my hand to it all if that makes sense yes and that's obviously benefit of being a contractor as well I guess is no you can you can do with that all-rounder sort of uh role rather than something very specific yeah that's it so Russ from what we've we've lost professional Journey this is an interesting one so what do I want so anyone that's listening to to this what do I want them to know or understand I want them to know I would tell anyone that's that's thinking about going to the land of service now or on their Journey already I would say to absolutely think about soft skills it's not all about um technical ability um you know narrow learning is fantastic uh don't get me wrong there's a lot of stuff out there some good YouTube videos uh to watch plug there um but I would also say I would also say um it's about soft skills as well and I think it's something you mentioned is yeah um learn how to be comfortable in what you're what you're talking about technically but also learn how to listen to the customers um quite often I've sat there and people just impart knowledge or say this is the way it is it's great this is the way they act the boxes that's fantastic that's what we're there for but we're also therefore to understand what the customer wants and apply that service now and that means we've got to listen and we've we've got to be um we've got to have those soft skills as well so that's number one yeah very cool yep um number two I would say dedication and hard work um things uh and I have to tell my kids this as well actually things don't just fall on your lap um I think if you know if if like in the quick I can put this um in context for for coding so for example if you've got a particular um bit of code that you're working on business rule or I don't know script included or widget or something and it's just not working is it's that tenacity to keep going until you either work it out or you're able to to find other avenues to work it out you know stack Overflow Community um Again YouTube um but but that tenacity to keep um going um and and kind of not give up so I would say that I mean we've all been there I hope we've all been there anyway until um you know I I've been there at 11 o'clock at night or one o'clock in the morning and can't sleep because I'm thinking that one line of code is doing my head and why will it not work yes and the same breath is about knowing when you stop it's almost just as important to know when to ask for help yeah yeah there's that balance here you can't can't keep going and then kind of get lost in The Ether but you do need to have a certain level of tenacity to to try and work it out okay so that's my number two okay yeah that's my number two my number three was was actually gonna be well it will be is to enjoy it um is to enjoy doing what you're doing I'm not sure how you deliberately do that but you can you can put um there's ways and means that you can make things fun but I genuinely enjoy doing what I'm doing and if I didn't it'd be quite a painful experience but yeah because a lot of the time in it especially IT jobs people do it because they know they're good at it because it's comfortable not because they enjoy it I think that's a fantastic reason for anybody out there who was looking to apply for any service now position if you generally have an interest and you know find it enjoyable to work with then it's going to make life a lot easier yeah and and it kind of works with something that you said right right towards the start of your um your journey is the money was good right and I think if there's anyone out there that goes to interviews um for servicenow or any other roles and they're not thinking about how much is this paying uh you know what I mean come on you don't go to an interview without knowing how much he's going to pay you or at least if you do you go there slightly annoyed that you can't ask that question yeah oh yeah you absolutely want to yeah so yeah I from your point earlier yeah of course the money needs to be good but you I would say it needs to be more enjoyable is more important it's definitely more important to me anyway so enjoy it that's my third one yeah so we got just a summarize we've got the core skills we have the hard work and dedication and we've also got the enjoyment enjoy your job yes that's my three fantastic well it's great to learn about your your journey and what you feel is important for those who are looking to get into the same the same line of business that we are so if um I guess if anyone's got any questions about Journeys or on a similar Journeys or you know perhaps just wants to share their Journey with us maybe we could read them out next time um yeah we could do a section can we next time we'll read out people's emails perhaps absolutely yeah just spell the mix yeah if you've got any questions or insights um or any topics you want us to cover just you know give us a shout um and um I guess we'll wrap it up here and we'll uh we'll see you next time yep just watch out for those pigeon homes that's all for today's podcast thank you for listening and if you want to get your question answered by the service Ducks get in touch through talk to the doc at service hyphenducks.com or just use one of the links below [Music] foreign