Core's Senior Presales Consultant Jessica Meats began her career in IT at Microsoft's UK headquarters, joining their graduate scheme straight out of university. Since then, she has established herself as a SharePoint specialist, sharing her skills and expertise with both the Core team and clients. In her spare time, Jess enjoys writing and is a published author. Her latest book -and ninth title to date- 'Wolf Unleashed' is out now. In the latest instalment of our Core People series, Jess tells us more about her "varied" role and reveals her favourite author...
What is your role at Core?
My primary role is Senior Presales Consultant specialising in SharePoint, so that’s a lot of demos, a lot of early conversations, a lot of helping customers figure out if the technology is right for them and understanding what they need the technology to do. But I also work more broadly across other technology, so if some one is looking at Office 365 and doesn’t know where to begin we can have quite a broad conversation. I also work with the consulting teams delivering SharePoint consultancy and training
How long have you worked at Core?
A little over four years.
What do you enjoy most about working at Core?
Everyone is really friendly and helpful. Everyone is ridiculously busy, but if you need help with something people are always happy to provide that support. It’s a very supportive environment.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
Probably the breadth of technology I need to know about for presales, because I can go in to talk about Cloud and think we’re going to be discussing SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, and we get derailed into a conversation about Azure Active Directory or CRM Online. I have to know enough about the very wide range of technology Core works with. It's definitely a challenge to stay up to speed given how fast all of these solutions move.
What has been your career highlight while at Core?
There have been lots of fun moments. Possibly getting an award at the quarterly meeting. It’s always nice to feel appreciated and recognised, and that other people appreciate my contributions. It’s nice to feel like people see what I’m doing and that it is actually making a difference to Core; that I’m not just some cog in the machine.
Describe working at Core in a sentence…
Incredibly varied.
In your spare time you like to write and are a published author, with your ninth book recently released. Can you tell us a little about it?
It is a fantasy story set in the modern world -or a world that is very much like ours- but there are werewolves. The main plot line is all about the fight for civil rights for werewolves, because they’re not treated as equal to humans. It came out on Aprils Fool’s Day!
What would you be doing if you didn’t work at Core/in IT?
Definitely being a published author, but the money in that field is not as much as your might hope when you look at the likes of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King. You’re one in a million to get like that! Most people don’t make enough money to live on from writing.
OK, time for some quick-fire questions!
Where were you born?
Manchester.
Who is your favourite author?
There are lots of authors I admire for their work. At the moment, my favourite author would probably be Becky Chambers. She writes sci-fi and she’s written a couple of books I found absolutely amazing.
Favourite series on Netflix?
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It’s bizarre! It’s utterly, utterly weird yet it all makes sense by the end of the season. It’s weird and silly and funny and absolutely brilliant.
