Mr Fix It - Skills Matrix for Recruiters and Head Hunters

Often I get asked for a list of skills and tool sets that I have worked with. This post sets out my skills and experience broken out into individual key skill sectors, and tabularised for easier reading and searching. I set out summary information to give you a feel for my approach in regard to each aspect or my experience and skills set.

Leadership

I am a passionate advocate of the “One Minute Manager” series of books, and I have been delivering Leadership and Management following closely with the principles described in this series of books for more than 15 years, with great success.

I have strong natural people skills and can build rapor with people at all levels. My style is to lead from the centre, being quick to catch people doing things right. I am carrot rather than stick, looking to encourage my colleagues to “Do things right” at the same time as “Doing the right thing”.

I have exceptional mentoring skills, being able to coach, and build an indviduals confidence. I develop team members abilities by believing in them, even when they don’t always believe in themselves. Working with them to break through their blockers, and build their self confidence by celebrating their successes with them.

A fast abstract thinker, I am passionate about contributing. I work well in a team problem solving setting, humble enough to admit what I don’t know, but confident enough to present new and innovative ideas and approaches.

Electrical / Mechanical Engineering

Although I began my career in computer science at a young age. I have not focused all of my career in software engineering, and because I have an interest in digital electronics and radio I got drawn into mechnical engineering. I want to mention some of my wonderful mentors who are responsible for developing my skills in mechanical engineering.

• John Nutkins
• Dave Every
• Arthur Tyrell
• Gerald Reed

Together these gentlemen mentored and trained me in the skills set out in this table below

Business Skills

Having held managerial and executive roles, and developed my own businesses. I am comfortable with all areas of business administration including

Business Systems Software

I have worked on Analysis, Design, Implementation, Training and ongoing support and development of the following business systems. Specifically in regard to applying the software to specific business requirements for a variety of businesses from wholesale, retail, pharmaceutical, financial and charitable sectors.

Software Development

I am a Linux / Unix developer through and through. I learned my craft on the early 8bit micro computers ( ZX Spectrum, Dragon 32, BBC and Commodore 64 ), I got exposure to Unix and OS3200 during my time at Scan Optics working on ICL 2900 Main Frames. Here is a non exhaustive list of systems, tools and languages I am familiar with.

Radio & Electronics

These skill have been developed through my hobby of Amateur Radio, and Robotics. Additionally working for Scan Optics, and ICL I developed skills with Scopes, Meters and Logic Analyzers. During my time at ICL I worked on production soldering of PCB’s, which included following schematics.