IT Insights Blog — PC Pro

We're almost halfway through 2016, and it's shaping up to be another great year. Everything is coming up Kyle! The family is doing well, the soccer team that I coach — 12-year-old girls — is undefeated again this year, and my main man, Steph Curry, is flying high. With back-to-back MVP awards and a soon-to-be second straight NBA championship, it’s no wonder that I love the guy.

I’m a newcomer to the field of IT. My background is publishing and I confess that I’m little more than an ink-stained hack. My job mainly entails reading about and listening to people much smarter than I, and then hammering out articles on various IT topics. Think of the fabled 1,000 monkeys banging away on 1,000 typewriters. The more I learn about the field, the more amazed I am at how pervasive IT is in all aspects of our modern world. There are literally tens of millions of people learning about and working with IT. Since I also work in IT, I figured that I ought to learn something about the field.

At TestOut Continuing Education, our mission is to make a difference in a person’s life through education using breakthrough technology. We take our mission so seriously that every decision we make must answer the question: What is best for the student? Obviously what is best for the student is to provide them with the best training, at the best price, to enable them to earn their IT certification. That is our bottom line, and that’s why it’s rewarding to hear from students who succeed.

I recently read an article in Certification Magazine about an older woman who suffers from physical disabilities so severe that she was considered unemployable. Lois Agler made her way to a Goodwill facility in Michigan that offered free IT training. She trained using PC Pro, earned her CompTIA A+ certification and is now working as a Tier-1 helpdesk technician earning more than $19 an hour. The article reminded me of a conversation with one of my Office Pro customers who suffers from dyslexia, a developmental reading disorder in which the brain has trouble recognizing and processing certain letters.

Being a member of the top-flight sales team at TestOut and TestOut Continuing Education has a lot of rewards: financial (of course), the camaraderie of interesting co-workers, and “Salsa and Chips Wednesdays.” One of the best aspects of my job, however, is hearing from satisfied customers. I love it when a customer is happy and achieving success utilizing our top-quality courseware. A few months ago, I received a call from a valued customer, Kevin Dillman. Kevin is the Technology Integration Specialist for Southwestern Jefferson County Schools in Hanover, Ind., and he’s doing a great job helping students earn their certifications. He asked if he could have an extra month of access to our PC Pro course for a hearing-impaired student who was trying to finish up his certification.