So… I’m behind on my own writing prompts I’ve been running on the Support Driven blog 😱. But I’m determined to catch back up now that my company grand meetup has passed and I’ve finished up my travel for the year following this week’s trip to Boston for Support Driven’s Leadership Summit.
Picking up where I left off:
When did you start your career in support and why? What’s your favorite thing about working in support?
My support career journey started in early July 2014. I’d left my job as a Marketing Manager at a performing arts center and followed my husband to New Jersey where he’d just been stationed with the United States Coast Guard. It was an exciting and scary time!
While I’d enjoyed my job in Marketing, I was looking for something new and ideally remote as I lived a very seasonal area on the coast of New Jersey. I also knew I’d really like to help people and find something that allowed me to do more writing every day.
As I browed remote jobs I stumbled on a posting for a Happiness Engineer at Automattic. I could work remotely and help customers build sites on WordPress.com (which I’d already dabbled with in college along with other website editors, HTML, and CSS). As I researched the company and read the many blog posts that automatticians (that’s what we call ourselves) had written, I quickly realized it was exactly what I was looking for.
It was a bit daunting, and I didn’t feel super qualified, but I didn’t have a job and was in love with what I’d read so I sent off my resume and email describing why I should be their next Happiness Engineer.
Surprisingly to me at the time, they wrote me back a few weeks later.
Before I knew it I’d interviewed, done a project, and was passed on to the infamous Happiness Engineer trial and the rest is history! I’ve been working at Automattic four years this month.
In terms of what do I love most about working in support? Definitely helping others. At first, that meant helping WordPress.com customers build amazing sites with us. Now it involves coaching and helping my team members grow in their own support careers. Helping people start at the beginning, whether it’s building a site or starting a career as a Happiness Engineer with hopes to learn all the things we do, I love helping people conquer problems and meet goals.
If you aren’t a Support Driven community member following the writing challenge, what about you? How did your career in support begin and what is your favorite part of working in support?
Kristen Zuck 