In March 2020, Senthil lost his job as a direct result of COVID-19.
He and his family had only been in Australia for a year. They migrated from Singapore in April 2019 without any job prospects, with their two young daughters.
Luckily both he and his wife secured jobs in Australia quickly and they settled into their new community in Melbourne. But when the pandemic hit, it was last in first out.
Unemployed with no job opportunities in Australia, Senthil made the difficult decision to move back to Singapore for a project.
He had been working as a Network Engineer most of his career, including a long stint of 12 years in IT infrastructure with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Singapore.
He waited until August 2020 to secure the flight and was happy to successfully complete the network project in early January - on budget and on time.
Senthil then had to wait an agonising 3 months for flights to open up, making it back to Melbourne in late March 2021 - 8 months had passed without being with his family.
His wife also works in IT, and she managed to hold onto her job and care for their daughters - 12 and 7 years old – during this challenging period.
Upon returning to Australia, Senthil tried to find a new job in Australia in his field but there were no prospects.
Then he decided to study Salesforce.
When he signed up to volunteer with Blaze Your Trail he had just 8 badges on Trailhead. He showed up to every morning training session at 6am, humble and eager to learn.
In August 2021 he passed his Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam.
Senthil told us “It was a great time with Blaze Your Trail to learn the basic skills in Salesforce. The training increased my confidence, and I was able to pass my first Salesforce certification as well.”
He contributed to a pro-bono project for Children’s charity Brainwave Australia, proudly sponsored by Aware Services. He was involved with the development of the new process of registration and funding applications, as well as the implementation of Amazon Connect/Service Voice.
In Sepetember 2021, Senthil started a new role at Treasury Wine Estates as a Network Engineer. He says that it is a “Great workplace. It’s a big team with operations in the US, UK, NZ and Australia.“ He is very happy in this role and hopeful for the future.
Congratulations Senthil. We are all very happy for you.
