Five Minutes With - Sarah Lyons

Office and IT Systems Administrator

Sarah Lyons

Sarah Lyons is a key member of the FMG IT department, supporting many new technological innovations and daily IT requirements Sarah keeps our internal systems running like clockwork.

What drew you to IT as a career?

This is a question that is asked of me all the time at family gatherings.

It’s something I naturally fell into, as I wanted to know why something worked or wouldn’t work.
If it is working on someone else’s computer but not my own I needed to know why. If it takes lots of research, before I got the answer then I was happy to do it as it meant that I was learning something new. Also, who wouldn’t want to be able to learn so many different processes, applications and software.

What’s the most rewarding part of your role?

Being able to work in a team that has years of experience, as not one day passes when I don’t learn something new. It might be something little but it is another piece in the puzzle.

What career advice do you have for those starting out in this industry?

If you don’t like writing documentation or talking to people you need to learn to, as 99% of the time you will need to do one or the other. Even if you are not the best at it remember practice makes perfect.

It also helps if you like change, as the technology world is always changing and you need to keep up with it.

Coffee or Tea?

Coffee all the way it gets you though the hard moments when you are trying to work out why something is not working and next minute you notice the mug is empty and you go have another one.

If you could give your past self 1 piece of advice what would it be?

Don’t ever let anything stop you! Live life with no regrets! If you are not doing what you like change it as something out there will make you strive for excellence.

Do you have a personal mantra or a quote that inspires you?

I think there is one in IT that we all live by “Don’t Panic”

Then personally “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible ~ Francis of Assisi”

Is there a stand out project from your time with FMG? What makes it special?

Might sound a little corny but re-cabling. Being able to spend a whole Saturday in the server room in the Melbourne office and being OCD about it. Nothing is messy and anyone can see where the cable is going now.

Another project I have been working on is National shared mailboxes. Over the past couple of months one of my biggest project has been cleaning up the shared mailboxes that we use within the company. This has included creating national shared mailboxes so our administration team can work seamlessly across states.