I was a dinosaur but now I’m reborn.
Let me explain. I’m in my 50’s and worked for most of my career as the office manager of a lovely family firm wholesaling envelopes.
But we didn’t make it through the recession and I found myself on the scrapheap.
The reason I say I was a dinosaur is that I had no knowledge of computers.
At work, we used to use pencils and erasers and write things in big red ledgers.
But now I can create a pivot table in Excel at the drop of a hat, run excel macros as easily as breathing and every day I find myself using Excel formulas that would have looked like rocket science just one year ago.
So how did I get here from there?
Well, the shock of being unemployed was tremendous and after 100 job applications it became clear that I didn’t belong in the world of work. Like a dinosaur, I was extinct! I got really panicky about it too, not knowing where to turn.
The Job Centre did an OK job of introducing me to some free Microsoft training courses but I could tell that they were standard government issue. At my age, you need skills to make you stand out, not fit in, so when I saw an advert in the Metro for MS Excel training at Pitman Training, I thought I’d investigate, especially as they let you sample the course, free.
I headed down to Pitman Training in Notting Hill and I was surprised at how intimate and personal it all was. I was also surprised at how much money it takes to get trained!
The Advisor at the training centre asked me lots of questions to identify what I didn’t know, which I thought was pretty smart although as it turns out, I didn’t know anything.
The Advisor thought my lack of knowledge was a strength, rather than a weakness!
She told me all about spreadsheet programmes and spreadsheet formulas and explained how offices are using Excel.
By this time I was pretty fired up and even though it was just over the absolute maximum I could afford to spend, I signed up for my Excel training course and started learning the same day!
For me, starting to learn Excel was really hard, almost weird, as I just had no clue, but the trainers on my course were so supportive.
In the beginning it was a bit like driving with a misted up windscreen but within hours I was so hooked on the course that I didn’t want to go home!
Their style is not the same as taking Excel classes as it is delivered in a self-paced training style which I won’t bore you with.
Suffice to say that you can never be the slow kid in the class, no matter how hard you try, even if everyone else was 20 years younger than me, which they’re not. Anyway, about 30 hours later (25 for the average student), I took my exam and a few weeks later I received a really beautiful Pitman Training certificate proclaiming that I had passed my Excel training course with distinction.
And on the back of that, I got a job as an office manager with a local cash and carry, doing pretty much what I used to do with the envelope company but this time on a computer using Excel 2007.
I’m the dinosaur who came back from the dead!
To find out more about Excel training, just call:
Notting Hill – 020 7792 5214
Holborn – 020 7025 4700
Manchester - 0161 923 6814
Or contact Pitman Training in London's Notting Hill or High Holborn or in Manchester, by email.
I'm sure you'll find them very helpful.
