John Twohig

I started at Abtran in 2016 as an agent in government services. After expressing interest, I was allowed to get some experience on social media and was a standby pool member for a few months.

Once the account ramped down, I was moved to the competition regulator. On this account I started on the phone but as a result of my social media experience was quickly moved to emails. While on this account I used the L&D portal and did a few courses which greatly helped my writing and formatting skills.

Returned back to government service as an agent and after the clients need increased, I became one of the full-time Social Media Executives. I then moved to a trainer role. I went through and revised the existing training material and created all new training material, working closely with the client.

I trained people up and began my role as a Product Specialist for the remainder of the calendar. I moved to another client and did the same revision and rebuilding of their training to update it from previous years, and also to translate it to a digital format. I then trained people and applied for, and was successful in obtaining an acting Team Leader role.

During my acting role, I applied for a permanent Team Leader role in the IT department, for a new team that was being created called End User Compute. I was successful and spent 2 years building up the team and establishing processes, as well as supporting the business however we can.

Most recently I have moved into a different role in the IT department. I am now the Problem Process Manager. I help to identify trends that cause reoccurring problems and once a trend, or problem, is identified, I work with the operations and the various stakeholders to see the problem through to resolution.

Throughout my journey, all members of staff I reached out to, at all levels were extremely helpful and accommodating. I received advice from Product Specialists, to Ops managers, to People Operations and Learning and Development. From the moment I expressed interest in turning my job into a career and started enquiring about progression, I received unending support all around. In a short space of time, I went from Agent, to Social Media, to Training and on to People Manager.

There are multiple paths you can take at Abtran and if you take a step in one direction, and it’s not what you expected, you can change direction and keep moving. I thought I wanted to be in a training role, but it turned out that People Management was what I enjoy, so I made the move to Team Leader and I was supported 100% every step of the way. As a result of all my experience coming up through the business and I was then identified as a candidate for problem management space as I came from operations into the support side of the business and brought with me a unique point of view of the company.