Self-Taught Success: From Church AV to County IT Professional with Fernando Reyes | Ep025

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, their computer and anything related to technology, printers, conference rooms, anything else like that. And yeah, that’s basically what I do for Clark County. I work for the county. Yeah. Manuel: And now we’ll go ahead and we’ll kind of start and get a little bit of history about your experience and your background. So if you wouldn’t mind kind of telling me, you know, kind of like where you grew up and then eventually what got you interested into technology? Fernando: Yeah. So I’m from Mexico, originally. I was born in Tijuana, born and raised there. And my dad introduced me to technology pretty early on. I remember one time he just arrived and got us a computer. It was a Windows 95. That was my first contact with technology as in a computer. Right. And I remember that I always liked, you know, electronics. I think we had LP radio and I would mess up with stuff and I would open the electronics and my dad would get mad because I would just try to fix everything. I think that was my first touch with technology. Finally, he got us a computer to my brothers and my sister and myself. And he just teach us how to use Lotus 1, 2, 3 and printing. And then, you know, came PowerPoint. And I remember he had a, he had us for school encyclopedia. It’s called Encarta. That was back in the day, like with just a couple DVDs and you just put them in, research information to use it. And that’s what I think that was basically my first encounter with technology. And I was fortunate enough to, that my dad provided that instrument and allowed us to learn. And, but, you know, as I grew up, I didn’t really get that much guidance. I said, oh, you can have this as a career. And I think I just went for what I thought was okay. You know, I like, I like animals and I like the sea and stuff like that. And, and I decided to go to college for biology. And that was like, you know, my choice. And so I moved to another city. I started going to college and, and then I moved here and to Vegas. I think it was 2007 on December. I remember I arrived here and, you know, I’ve been a Christian my whole life. And, and I, as I started going to church here, they told me, hey, would you want to help out with the, with the multimedia ministry? That was the, the, where the cameras, the recording, the sound, the lights and all that stuff. So I really got into that. And after I started that journey, I, I, I, they gave me the opportunity to, to be there more time, right. To a point where I was hired by my church to work for them. And I was there for 11 years from that point. And it was just, you know, everything just kind of fell into pieces and I was given opportunities and I, I didn’t say no. Manuel: And so then when you got that computer, it wasn’t, it was kind of more of a tool, right? It was a tool for you guys to go be able to do your homework, to be able to do research. So it wasn’t like, hey, here’s a computer. And, you know, like you said, start trying to forge a career out of it. It was really like, Hey, this is probably the future. Right. And it just kind of really did not fall behind at that point. Cause Windows 95, that’s around the time. I think we did 95 or 98 is around the time when we got our computer at home. So, you know, again, it was just like, now you can do your homework, you can do your assignments. Fernando: Yeah, that’s exactly it. And that’s exactly what my dad said. He was very into looking to the future. And my dad was like, Oh, this is going to be the future. So you guys should, you know, take advantage of this. I remember one time he, I got in trouble because I, I took my assignments. I wasn’t elementary at the time. I took it on a paper and printed the paper and the teacher didn’t want to receive my, my paper. And my dad had to go and talk to them about it. But, but yeah, he, he saw the future and, and, you know, he gave us that tool, but that’s about it. You know, he didn’t tell us what you mentioned. Hey, this could be a career for you or anything. Cause he was, he, he, he is an accountant and he, you know, he didn’t really give us any more advice about that. And my mom, you know, same way he, she supported us and he, he supported us as well, but not, they didn’t really give us like a, like a guidance. Hey, you should do this. You just want to choose something, go to college, I’ll pay for it. And that’s it, you know? Um, but yeah, until I got here is where I kind of shifted and I started thinking, Oh, where do I, what do I really want to do? And that’s where everything kind of started to fall, fall in. Manuel: And so him being an accountant. So then my guess is that’s probably where he saw it, right? Cause he’s probably using the computer at work to kind of do, like you said, Lotus one two, three and all that, like being able to do Excel spreadsheets and kind of manage it forward. So then biology, and then you ended up coming here. So then as you’re kind of picking up all the multimedia, right, it’s not, it’s not a PC, but it is a lot of electronics. So it’s, it’s technology. So when they hired you on, what types of things were you doing from there? Was it just kind of basic setup where, you know, if you kind of just walk me through what you, the different skills you were picking up in that role? Fernando: Yeah. So I, there was one, uh, one coworker I had, which basically not my boss directly, but he, he was an authority and he, he, uh, he teached us a lot of me and another, another person, another coworker I had at the time, but I was mostly at the beginning helping with recording during the live services, record, be in the mixer, like, you know, to move the cameras and make sure everything is recorded to a DVD. At the time it was still recording to DVDs. We had a little machine and a little mixers with the screen, with the multi views and everything like that. And that was the b...