To mark International Women’s Day 2024, we sat down with Simrah Khan, functional consultant at TrueNorth IT. Simrah started with us as a graduate in November 2020, originally as a solution developer. She has made great progress and is now on our functional consultant path, helping to gather requirements, delivering Power Platform solutions and using her great communication and organisational skills.
Simrah, tell us about your role at TrueNorth
My role as a functional consultant involves liaising with customers, gathering ideas for what they want from their new or updated system. My work with customers ranges from the nitty gritty of functionality to exploring how their business works. I extract that information, then put together user stories for the development team, breaking down the customer’s requirements. I also do development work myself, providing support on the systems.
While I started at TrueNorth as a graduate developer, the senior members of the team realised that I had strong skills as a functional consultant. So I officially switched to my current role in June 2021. It was great to get that level of acknowledgement and flexibility. My job is now a 50/50 mix of people skills and tech skills.
TrueNorth as a company is very accommodating and flexible, I think it’s amazing. They are really supportive employers, for instance we have the opportunity to enhance our skillsets and gain Microsoft certification. I’ve been given a lot of help and training from the beginning. When I moved into functional consultancy, I learnt everything from scratch with the support of my colleagues. Everyone has been a mentor in that way, I’m really grateful.
What first made you interested in a career in technology?
It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment. But my dad also works in IT. He’d come home with his laptop and I was captivated by it. He bought a desktop PC and I was fascinated by how it fit together, and that piqued my interest. At school, ICT classes felt second nature. At secondary school, I saw that there were so many different areas of IT, we worked on different things each term. I found the classes logical and engaging, and realised how diverse a subject it is.
Have you faced any barriers in your career or studies due to being a woman?
I went to an all-girls school, and while the ICT teachers were mostly male, I never came across anyone insinuating that I couldn’t have a career in tech. My teachers were open minded. Even at Uni, where the course was full of males and just a handful of women, my tutors were very supportive. They never made you feel that you were less than, in fact I felt like they gave you even more encouragement and opportunity. When I was applying for a placement year, I sometimes did feel at assessment group days, particularly at larger firms, that more of a priority was given to the males. Perhaps they had more of a connection with the interviewers. Looking back, that was the only place where barriers might have existed.
Now that I’m at TrueNorth, I feel completely at home in the office. There’s no difference between me and my male colleagues. The team is wonderful and everyone at TrueNorth is a great fit, we all have a similar mindset and, when we work together, it’s a team effort.
What does gender equality mean to you?
For me it means that, as a female, you shouldn’t be made to feel less than in any aspect, at work, in terms of pay, in the ability to do certain things in a job. It’s having the opportunities that others have. At TrueNorth that is actually the case, the opportunities available to other people in the company are also available to me.
What advice would you give to young women thinking about a career in technology?
I would say that, if anything in the tech world piques your interest, don’t let the thought of it being a male-dominated industry put you off. Don’t feel you need to shy away from it. If you’re working in one area of IT, you have the opportunity to get exposure to other areas, such as business analysis or user experience design. When I started at TrueNorth, I didn’t think functional consultancy came under IT, but when I was approached about the idea, I was open to it and it widened my horizons. So definitely never shy away from something that attracts your interest, because you don’t know where it might lead you.
What changes would you like to see for the next generation of women in technology?
The technology industry has advanced with the inclusion of women, but some people, even to this day, are made to feel like it’s not for them. You need to be open minded and confident in yourself. I’d like to see more everyday role models; at the moment you have to actively get yourself out to groups such as Women in Tech and Girls Who Code.
Which women inspire you the most?
Ada Lovelace, the first programmer in the world. She inspired me when I first heard about her; to think that she educated herself and pushed herself to do the work she did. In those times, there were different expectations for women, they were expected to utilise their skills in other ways. She pushed those boundaries so that she could do what she enjoyed.
