I intend for this section to list out and describe some of the more specific abilities that I have in addition to my broader skills and knowledge. The focus is primarily on software applications and their uses. None of these skills are groundbreaking by any means, just things that I have picked up along the way.
The scores I assigned are arbitrary but relative to each other and based on how I would rank myself compared to the average user of each software. For example, I would consider myself in the 85th percentile of the average user of Excel. Still, I would rate myself higher than the general population and lower than power users of any given application.
OTHER
ABILITIES
Microsoft Excel & Microsoft Office
8.5/10
Adobe Illustrator & Adobe InDesign
7.7/10
Intuit Quickbooks
8.4/10
Microsoft Project & Asana
7.4/10
Tableau &
Microsoft Power BI
6.6/10
Microsoft Visio & Lucidchart
8.1/10
But wait, there's more!
The following four sets of skills are ones that I learned much more incidentally than the six listed above. Whether I discovered them through personal hobbies or happened to get thrust into a role where I needed to get something done, I never set out to learn any of these for professional use. That said, some of these I know just as well, if not better, than the applications listed above.
Photography & Videography
8.2/10
This is a vast category that I started learning entirely as a hobby but utilized at my former company for internal business use and as an additional revenue stream. I do a decent amount of photography in my personal life; I have done so on and off since I was a kid. Through that, I have been a long-time user of Adobe Lightroom and, more recently, Capture One. I have used Adobe Photoshop over the years and have formal certification, but it does not rival my experience with Lightroom or Capture One. In that vein, I also hold an FAA Part 107 license for remote aircraft (drones). I have experience flying various drones over the years for personal enjoyment and even a bit of commercial use. I have even utilized some pretty cool surveying and mapping software such as DroneDeploy. Finally, through personal hobbies and graduate school projects, I have amassed a good amount of experience editing videos with Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro. I have gone back and forth between these two software’s, although I admittedly do not use either regularly.
Network &
IT Applications
7.6/10
I have no formal networking or computer science training but have been reasonably tech-savvy ever since I was a child. I would be a rich man if I could be paid for the hours I spent fixing my grandmother’s computer problems. As a teenager, I always liked to push the envelope when it came to technology. I would always jailbreak my phones, try and find expensive software for free, and even hijack the neighbor’s wifi a time or two. These experiences wound up paying off for me when working for an industrial networking company as I already had a solid foundation on how things worked. I did stuff like network troubleshooting, network mapping, server access, server configuration, and assisting with virtual machines running VMWare in a client-facing capacity. I also performed backups using Veeam and set up remote monitoring and management using Syncro and ConnectWise Control software. Keep in mind, none of these are things that were ever part of my job title or degree plan. However, they are all things that needed to be done, so I learned as I went.
Microsoft Azure & Active Directory
7.9/10
These two both fall under the “I learned as I went” category, but I wound up getting comfortable with both of them and utilizing my skills for both internal and client-facing uses. I have used both of these applications in both on-premise and cloud-based environments. I don’t think that there is nearly as much to expound on here as there isn’t a remarkable story on how I learned them, and both have pretty defined use cases. However, I have experience provisioning users and devices such as servers and PCs, creating group policies and installing software remotely, planning and implementing credentials and access controls, and integrating with external apps and SSO.
Architectural & Engineering
6.6/10
This might be the category that I am secretly most fond of (I did say that I would’ve been an architect in another life, didn’t I?). All my experience here is entirely for personal use; I am not qualified as an architect or engineer in any way. I have often pondered how I would want my future home to look. During my graduate program, I wanted to get some of my ideas out of my head and onto paper. One thing led to another, and I wound up using Chief Architect software to build a complete model of what I wanted. It is a project that I work on for a few weeks at a time every six months or so, but I have to limit myself as it is very time-intensive. At some point in my revising process, I started looking to see if it would be feasible to build safely and cost-effectively. So that led me down the rabbit hole of building codes, allowable spans, material selection, and much more. I wound up using Structural Calc and ForteWEB to calculate various loads and spans for my structure. I then started to create specific construction details as CAD models, primarily in SketchUp and a little in SolidWorks. I have not made it as far on CAD models, but CAD software is at the top of my list to learn more about. It has value for both my personal and professional endeavors.