E94 - Ronnie Wong at ITProTV

Our Co-Founder George Barnes was joined by Ronnie Wong, the Edutainer Manager at ITProTV. Ronnie has been there for 8 years now and has recently become the Manager within the last 7 months. During this episode, George and Ronnie discuss the best route to networking and some great advice to those wanting to jump into the trainee role.

Back in the day, Ronnie came out of college and went into Ministering at churches. He reached out to do other things during that time and struck a job as a Diesel Mechanic. He went into a strange transition in his personal life, getting married and it was a pivotal moment for him. The Diesel career took a turn and it meant he would have to be away from his baby daughter, which ultimately pushed him to make the decision to look for something else.

He decided to start training in the IT realm while trying to find something that he knew was solid. He started attending a school to learn more about IT and ended up doing that and call centre work. He was approached and asked to start teaching which led him down the training route.

ITProTV was a start-up and they wanted trainers who were willing to train in the way they wish they were trained, and he’s been doing that ever since.

What do you need to know?…

“It’s like taking a sip of water through a fire hose”.

The amount of knowledge you will try to absorb at the start seems like it impacts you in the face and you’re never going to get ahead of it. Hopefully what you will learn if you are willing to take the learning on board is that what you learn from that point in your career, is built off those fundamentals. If you find it challenging, take that as a good thing because you committed yourself during the hardest time. It doesn’t get super easy but it’s what you learn at the start that you can refer back to during your career. If you don’t have that firm foundation, everything you build on top of that won’t be solid.

When it comes to finding the best route into Networking, Ronnie suggests not being afraid to take a job that’s not specified what you think it should be. The ability to rise through the ranks in the USA is quick because they are already looking for the next opportunity. Take the job that’s there and available to you and ask if an opportunity is there to get promoted.

For someone in Networking looking to go down the trainee path, if you feel you have the experience and patience to deal with people on a daily basis and are willing to deal with those 5000 irrelevant questions in order to help those people who have 1 or 2 great questions, then do it.

On the technology side of things, it really is going to be about Cyber Security in terms of where the future is going. Whether you have technical skills or not, you are going to want to know about Cyber Security. It will be the biggest thing in the industry for the next decade or so.

Ronnie shares some career advice for those starting out in the Networking field. Make sure you tune in now to hear the full episode.