Pictured above: Clicks’ 2019/20 Contractor of the Year, Demith Samaraweera
INTRODUCING Clicks’ 2019/20 Contractor of the year, Demith Samaraweera! Demith was presented with his prize – a Smart Home Prize Pack, including; Google Home Max, Philips Hue Lighting System and an August Smart Home Lock valued at over $1,500 – on Tuesday by Clicks’ National Contractor Care Manager, Rachel Rose, and Account Manager, Allyson Ifergan.
We were excited to receive a large number of fantastic nominations this year. Although this makes our job of selecting a winner more difficult, it’s a great reflection on the efforts our contractors put into their work, and it’s amazing to see them recognised by their managers. Here’s the winning nomination – it was Demiths’ ability to adapt and provide solutions beyond his roles scope (still within his expertise) that pushed this nomination to the top!
Se Yong: “Demith initially joined VEC to assist with our network engineering requirements. However, we soon realised that Demith’s specialities extended into the cybersecurity space, far beyond the scope of the network engineering work. The quality and integrity of his work has been phenomenal. Since joining VEC, Demith has demonstrated thought leadership in the Cyber Security space and has been a great asset, steering the organisation in the right direction towards becoming a Cyber-Secure & Security-Centric culture.
As the manager of a small IT Engineering team, multi-tasking is a must and there are many ad-hoc tasks that arise. Demith has never complained about poor management, and has helped me to better manage the work by taking on these tasks and helping to mentor other members of staff.
Unlike most contractors, Demith cares about the organisation. I know this because Demiths’ focus is not only limited to just getting the job done, but also making sure the necessary skills have been transferred to other VEC staff so we can sustain the great work he has done.
I just cannot thank him enough with words and I wouldn’t hesitate to nominate him as a Contractor of the Year!”
Rachel and Allyson took the opportunity to ask Demith a couple of questions when they caught up.
Congratulations Demith, what excites you the most about your new Smart Home Prize Pack?
“The Google Home Max! I don’t have Google Home set up yet, I do have a lot of other Home connectivity items, but the Google Home Max is an ideal addition to my system – I’m very excited to set it all up.”
Pictured above: Clicks’ 2019/20 Contractor of the Year, Demith Samaraweera
What made you decide to become an IT contractor?
“My favourite part about being an IT contractor is my ability to work across jobs and roles that I’m actually excited about, rather than something that won’t be challenging and engaging. As an IT contractor I have the opportunity to experience different environments while being challenged on a daily basis. It allows me to do work that I’m actually interested in, and keeps me on the cutting edge with certifications, skills that are current technologies.”
What do you think it takes to be a standout IT contractor?
“I’d say the most important thing, is that you know what you’re doing. In the contractor space, the work can be industry specific, where the connections run deep – so pretty much everyone knows each other.
As long as you know what you’re doing and you can deliver results that is what will help you stand out as a top tier IT contractor.
In the cybersecurity space, there isn’t much competition as it is a high-demand skill set where there is a big skills shortage at the moment. This makes it easy for great contractors to stand out, as they’re highly visible to their stakeholders.”
And lastly, tell us what you enjoy most about your current engagement at the Victorian Electoral Commission?
“The best thing about my current role at the VEC is developing the autonomy and data silos. In the last 6 months I was able to design the solutions and I got the full authority to data pool access. Having this type of access, trust and autonomy to deliver solutions really enabled me to provide meaningful value.”
“What I mainly do is, implement the cyber security projects. In the past 6 months integrated an enterprise back-up solution, system wide for authentication, authorisation and device management. Now I’m doing enterprise network monitoring with additional cyber security cleans and consulting to ensure the organisation has what it needs.”
Those were the projects that I was doing, now I’m involved in training the operations team on all the tools, in the areas that they’re lacking. I do documentation, preparation and configuration of devices for the standards.”
Well done, Demith, and thank you to everybody who submitted a nomination for this years’ Contractor of the Year – we received some incredible praise for our dedicated #Clicksters around the country and it brought us great joy reading these submissions.
