Episode Information
Show Notes
In this episode of Career Downloads, Manuel Martinez sits down with Fernando Reyes to discuss his remarkable journey from church multimedia volunteer to Systems Technician II at Clark County.
Fernando shares how his technology journey began with a Windows 95 computer his father brought home, which sparked an interest that would later flourish when he volunteered at his church’s multimedia ministry. What started as helping with video recording evolved into a full-time position where he spent 11 years developing skills in production, IT support, and technical troubleshooting.
Throughout the conversation, Fernando reveals how he strategically navigated career transitions with a clear end goal in mind: working for Clark County. Despite having no formal IT education or certifications, he built his technical expertise through hands-on experience, YouTube tutorials, and guidance from mentors who recognized his potential.
Listeners will gain valuable insights on:
Building technical skills without formal education
Setting concrete career goals and working systematically toward them
Finding and learning from mentors who can accelerate your professional growth
Balancing family responsibilities while pursuing career advancement
Developing communication skills to effectively present technical solutions to leadership
Fernando also discusses the importance of character, loyalty, and commitment in building a successful technical career, as well as his future goals to develop his own business while continuing his work with the county.
Whether you’re starting your IT career or looking to make a strategic career move, this episode offers practical advice on career planning and professional growth that you can apply to your own journey.
#CareerDownloads #TechCareers #ITJobs
Transcript
Manuel: Welcome everyone. My name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where each episode basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background, their experience, and really how they manage their career over time to be able to kind of pull out any actionable advice that you can go ahead and use as you’re managing your own career. So for today, I have with me Fernando Reyes and we’re going to talk about his career journey, which I think is pretty interesting. We’ve had some conversations before and he really had a goal in mind, like an end goal, and he just consistently worked to being able to get there. So he didn’t know what was going to happen in between, but again, he was okay with kind of being able to move back and forth and really adjust over time. So I think it will be a good experience and a good story for everybody to kind of listen to. So with that, go ahead and plug in and download the knowledge and I will introduce Fernando.
Fernando: Thank you, Manuel. Thank you for having me.
Manuel: Of course, no problem. Glad you were able to come make it and kind of share your background.
Fernando: Yeah, of course, of course. Thank you. Well, like you said, you know, it’s been a couple of years with career in mind and goals in mind. As you know, as we get older, we start thinking, hey, what do I really want to be at? So about, you know, five, six years ago, I decided to have a goal in mind. I saw a position I liked and now I have that position, but it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be.
Manuel: Yeah, it’s usually, it ends up that way.
Fernando: Right, right.
Manuel: So if you wouldn’t mind, just kind of, everybody can get an understanding of who you are. So if you just don’t mind telling us what your current position is and it’s just a summary of, you know, what your roles and responsibilities are.
Fernando: Sure. So I am a Systems Technician II. That’s the formal position. I’m a glorified desktop technician, basically giving support to end users with, you know,