So, what did you do during the pandemic?
Of course, this is the question that EVERY interviewer of a job position is going to ask in 2025 (give or take the pandemic, and the recession after). I know I will be if I have the luxury of employing people! As this is my CV AND blog, I’m going to be (almost) honest here.
For a bit of background, I have actually made TWO business mistakes during the course of being the director of Guildford Web services Ltd, the first, start a business venture in the middle of Brexit (I was over-optimistic on how long it would take) My second one, was to start a product launch in the middle of a pandemic! To be fair, I was so far into the process, it made no sense to NOT launch, however, thanks to hindsight (which has 20/20 vision PUN INTENDED!) I could have easily not have done it.
So, at the beginning of the year, I was updating the site, getting the Domain Names and SSL products up and running, as well as regular blog posts on the company site. It is no surprise that I stopped on May 13th, when I realised that as people where being furloughed, companies tightening their purse strings, and figuring out that I was competing with pasta and toilet roll, that no custom was coming from the site whatsoever.
On the face of it, it does look like I haven’t done much. I have however been brushing up on my HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Bootstrap and WordPress skills. Some projects started and died, some carried on, and some I’m doing just so that I don’t go completely mad.
I am at present creating TWO WordPress themes for two websites that I host. The idea behind this is that there are a couple more sites on the portfolio section of this site. The other upshot to this is that my WordPress boilerplate for work has been updated too, which has the functions and elements I usually use on a theme. These will appear on this site once I have finished them! With regards to the company blog – there is only so much you can talk about when in a pandemic – and I’m being honest here, I have run out of ideas!! (I may republish some, just to make Google think it’s an active site though LOL)
So, yes, I’ve been quiet on the trading side of the business, but I have brushed up my on my skill set that is demanded by the industry I’m in.
