Ooooo, I’m hopefully getting a helper … hence the Boss referring to the potential ‘little orange helper’ as an Ooma Loompa. Except that I missed the reference the first time not being as exposed to kids’ movies as him, nor a Charlie fan particularly when I was a kid.
Anyway, the position is advertised, had to write a description and ad and will next have to think about doing interviews and what to ask. I’ve been on panels before but usually within government organisations where the process has to be proven transparent so not too much leeway for completely off-the-cuff discussions however around here we definitely look for personality so there will have to be an element of that. The Mister has got all sorts of weird and wonderful questions he asks in interviews – not those awful “tell us about a situation when you were faced with [insert some unusual situation of conflict that as the person being interviewed you feel you never have been] and how you dealt with that” but some slightly left-field alternatives to “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” so I’m thinking I’ll use milder versions of a couple of those.
Hard to know what kind of person would fit well working with me. I think I’d be terrible to work for – god my standards are so high even I can’t meet them half the time and when I think of all the information in all the corners of my mind (hmmm, how does that work when your head is round …?) I struggle to think how I could pass that on successfully and actually let go of some of it. It’s actually really nerve-wracking thinking that I’ll be in the position of having to say yes or no I think someone can be my assistant off the back of a CV and an interview, and if there’s a successful candidate, responsible for providing them with a satisfying job and decent experience. This is such a niche job that we’re looking for someone reasonably inexperienced in this field so there’s some pressure to mould them for a higher calling. Eeek.
Wahoo! Big milestone – launched Xero in Australia today. Product release has just finished.
Massive couple of weeks for me updating the now enormous Help Centre so that it’s relevant for Australia – I want our Australian customers to see screenshots showing AUD not NZD or GBP and the correct GST rate for their country and addresses on invoices that look like they belong to Australia, as well as help for their specific GST filing requirements as they work in Xero. Over the last 3.5 weeks I’ve updated 120 help pages and created 250 images! Believe me, that’s a LOT of work.
I’ve also created a full demo organisation in Xero so people can take a look around how Xero would work for them – there’s loads of transactions, dummy Australian bank accounts fully reconciled and nicely printing invoices and statements complete with my own homemade Australian company logo … which suspiciously looks like the theme the design guys went with for the Xero Australia website homepage … I swear mine was first … I’ve been building the demo company for weeks.
If you ever want to see the free demo companies I create, just go to the Xero website (www.xero.com) and use the green ‘Try Xero’ button to sign up for a free trial.
Interesting. I was just poking around the ERMA (Environmental Risk Management Authority) website (where I used to work) and in the time since I started the management group has pretty much completely turned over (quite a feat for a government department one would think) and what’s more is now almost all women (ditto on the feat!) The structure was slightly different when I started but I’m pretty sure it was all men, and now it’s 4 women and 2 men (yes, including the CEO).
The Mister found a website dedicated to this brilliant cartoon I’ve had on my wall since 2005. Perhaps not so relevant in my job now but I’ve worked on plenty of projects and wherever I was in 2005 it was relevant!
http://www.projectcartoon.com/
Next day … found it. My location in October 2005. I was at ERMA (Environmental Risk Management Authority) as a kind of group project manager/analyst doing everything from preparing Board and Ministerial reports to managing implementation and testing of a database upgrade to the Notified Toxic Substances register. How about that!
Am SO CHUFFED with myself. Just went cold turkey and did the test we give people wanting to become certified to train people to use Xero and got full marks 🙂 Was dreadfully nervous and given that I write the help there really was no excuse for not knowing everything … although some of the conversion balance questions were a bit tricky.
God I’m on *such* a high!
2 days later …
Here’s my official certification … I made my first mistake on the official certificates I write for Xero and when ripping it up I noticed this bit left over so thought it would do as make-shift self-certification! It’s on the mantlepiece above my desk.
Was called into the Dev room today to take a photo of our ‘Canteen Lady’s’ latest baking effort (she’s the one who made the Xero cookies) – Chocolate Fish Cup Cakes – look at all that pink n chocolate!
I read the text of this review of Xero on www.nzmac.com a couple of days ago but it wasn’t until I went to their site that I saw the little key that goes along with the review.
‘Documentation’ can only mean one thing I think – the product’s online help! Yaaaaay!
The latest release of Xero this morning meant a MASSIVE update to Help Centre. I’ve been buried in it for 2-3 weeks and when I had a count up this morning I realised what had been changed – 415 images and 142 help pages – plus checking all the links to new/updated files! No wonder I’m exhausted!
My latest responsibility at work is that of calligrapher … well printing neatly on some certificates we need to issue. Seems rumour spread around the office that I had the neatest handwriting which I found surprising seeing as we have designers and arty people here. Any my handwriting sure isn’t as neat as the days of a middle-finger callus in the time before computers!
