Hey Adnan, firstly thanks for coming back to me, I really appreciate it.
I kind of agree with everything you have said, although bear in mind I was just trying to introduce myself gently to this forum first, and wanted to just throw in a few of the technologies I have worked with to see if anybody recognises them initially. My cover letters and CV's are obviously much different and quite a bit more detailed. You are right though really, I have struggled to get people too interested in what I have worked on in the past, but I think its because its so specific to call center technology, which if anything is almost too prevalent in the UK, they are every bloody where
I have yet to find anything similar in Finland really. What I dont want to do is tie myself to that though, its just that this was my obvious strength and experience.
So my title for the last 15 years has been Application Specialist. I have been part of a group of 4 people working on a customer site, close with the customer, on their IVR projects. IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response, and is the touch tone/voice response telephone system I mentioned earlier. The particular IVR technology I worked on was called Encore IVR, which sits on Windows 2000 server.
I worked on the whole life cycle of the IVR projects, so I would initially work with the customer on requirements gathering and specification design for the project they wanted, for example banking or share saving applications, then would produce quotes on these designs. When we got the go ahead we would order and work on the servers that the IVR would sit on, which were Dell Poweredge servers, with Telephony boards installed to take voice calls, and the first part of my job was to build these servers, including any boards, then install the OS and all the software needed to turn the system into an IVR, and install them on the customer site.
I would then develop the project. This was done in a development package called Script Express, which was a proprietary development tool specifically built for the Encore IVR. Its an object orientated GUI based development tool (imagine a flowchart). Any programming that couldnt be performed within Script Express because of its limitations were done in Visual Basic, where we would create dll's and use them by calling them from within Script Express. I would also use XML from within script express when speaking to the customer DB's, and there was sometimes screen emulation with some of the customers mainframes. If the IVR was a speech recognition enabled application, I would develop speech systems using Nuance to recognise the customers speech input. I would also work with recording artists to provide the voice of the IVR system.
After the dev was finished, sometimes which could take up to a year, I would work with the customer on various levels of testing, putting the system live, then I supported the product in the live environment, actually supporting the systems 24/7 on call, and worked on fully documenting the product for the customer and for our own support.
In the last year I have moved into a 2nd line support role, supporting Cisco ICM mainly, which is an intelligent call routing application. It takes the customers calls from the point they hit the switch at a call centre, all the way to the agent and their desktop, carrying all the customers data with it. I support every part of this, including the Windows 2000/2003 servers which holds this platform and the Cisco software installed on there. I analyse faults that are raised by our customers, including dropped calls, desktop software crashes, working with other teams if network hits affect the platform we support, working with third party vendors to replace faulty parts in the servers, using SQL to search the Cisco databases for call details and agent activity.
I do have a GitHub account, really just to try and see how it works, I haven't had to use it professionally yet, and as I have recently been getting into Java I have been looking around the web quite a bit for guides, and have been reading quite a bit of StackOverflow (I have the app installed on my laptop which is great). I enjoyed learning C++ at University and did well with it, but haven't needed to use it professionally so have lost touch with it a bit, and I just feel now is the time I want to pick up what I would call pure development again, especially now that I have a bit of time on my hands.
I am not only searching for a job, I am trying to make myself more relevant in the job market, so would appreciate any advice at all, that's if you are still reading and got this far
Cheers!
