For 25 years, GEO Jobe has been paving a path through the geospatial industry, serving clients with innovative GIS and IT solutions. Our company’s commitment in this space has led to the highest level of partnership with the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (Esri). What’s the key to our success and longevity? It’s the faces behind our company. GEO Jobe is made up of a growing team of talented, hard-working people who each embody our company philosophy of “acknowledging the person first and the problem second.”
Meet one of those people, Junior Application Developer Kenny Tran, who joined GEO Jobe in 2022.
Q: What is your role at GEO Jobe, and what does it entail?
Kenny: I’m a Junior Application Developer for the Products Innovations Team. I work with our ArcGIS solution applications: Admin Tools, Backup My Org, Clean My Org, and other support applications. I also do content writing and documentation that directly assist our customers with using GEO Jobe products and other technology associated with them.
Q: What has your career path at GEO Jobe looked like and what attracted you to join the team?
Kenny: My career path to GEO Jobe started when I completed my certification at the Mississippi Coding Academy. It was where I got the opportunity to meet GEO Jobe’s David Hansen and Eric Goforth. I got to share some of my projects with Eric and get his outlook on becoming a successful programmer.
It wasn’t until after my completion of the program that I coincidentally saw David and had a chance to share a quick conversation. I mentioned that I was aspiring to continue my studies in programming and planned to break into the job market as soon as I further improved my resume and portfolio. To my surprise, he made the suggestion that I should consider submitting an application and seeing what chance may come from it.
Long story short, I joined the GEO Jobe team in October 2022, and I quickly found out that it was the right place for me as I now get to work with exciting (yet challenging) projects while continuing to learn and build my career.
Q: What jobs and experiences have led you to your current position?
Kenny: I got a lot of my soft skills–such as communication, organizational management, and problem-solving–from the many jobs I held in various industries such as car rental, food and beverage, tourism and hospitality. However, much of my technical skills were picked up during the pandemic lockdown. With the unfortunate mass layoffs and uncertainty of the times, I made the difficult choice of changing my career path, and started pursuing programming by self-study and eventually getting my certification at the Mississippi Coding Academy.
Q: What particular skills or talents are most essential to be effective in your job?
Kenny: Having great problem-solving skills is a must. There are many occasions where you don’t have the answer to a problem, so being able to do the research or deductively asking the necessary questions is what will lead you in the right direction if not directly finding the answer. It’s something that I had to build over time as I’ve been getting more exposure to different challenges that come from projects and the different technology.
Q: What technologies and strategies do you use in your day-to-day work that are key to success?
Kenny: I find organization to be a very crucial aspect of my job on the daily. What’s been helpful for me is Google’s many online tools such as their Calendar for tracking upcoming meetings and deadlines, Docs for taking notes and organizing my thoughts, and Sheets for keeping track of data collections.
Jira is another great tracking tool for keeping my team updated on tickets that I have worked on or what others have worked on. I document a lot of my tests and findings there in hopes to offer any additional context or transparency to anyone who may potentially need that information.
Q: What would you like to learn more about or incorporate into your daily work?
Kenny: With my time at GEO Jobe, I believe I still only scratched the surface when it comes to GIS. Being at GEO Jobe, I’m exploring deeper into GIS and exploring more technology that could potentially help to build new innovative solutions and applications.
Q: Any advice for recent graduates entering into the job market and aspiring to a similar role?
Kenny: Always continue to learn. Be creative in how you do it. Don’t get stuck in just the tutorials. Start building projects and reading documentation along the way. Also, take advantage of the networking opportunities that come your way. You never know what chance comes from it.
Q: On a more personal side, do you have a favorite newspaper, magazine, blog, or sources of inspiration?
Kenny: I occasionally stay up-to-date on TechCrunch for technology-related news and current events. I also pick up a lot of educational and straight-to-the-point content from social media channels that prioritize technology and programming.
Q: What kind of technology do you prefer and why?
Kenny: I grew up on PCs, so navigating through Windows seems second nature to me. Outside of that, I consume more iOS products that connect easily to my iPhone.
Q: What do you enjoy doing outside of the office?
Kenny: Overall, I just like to stay busy. These days, I dedicate a lot of my time to my dog and his two mischievous siblings, my friends and family, or working on my fitness. Occasionally, I do like to try out a new restaurant or bar, explore new music, or attend a fun event/concert in the city.
GEO Jobe is a leading GIS software and geospatial solutions provider, serving more than 10,000 organizations globally. GEO Jobe is best known for developing the most popular applications in the ArcGIS Marketplace, including Admin Tools for ArcGIS, Backup My Org, Clean My Org and Scheduler for ArcGIS.
GEO Jobe offers U.S.-based 24/7 Support solutions for organizations using Esri’s ArcGIS© System. GEO Jobe also offers professional services focused on Esri’s ArcGIS© System, including custom software development, enterprise solution implementation, data science and UAV data collection.
Founded in 1999, GEO Jobe is in its 25th year of operation, has been an Esri business partner since 2002 and is currently a Platinum Partner.
For more about our variety of GIS products and services and how we could take your organization’s GIS vision to the next level, email GEO Jobe at connect@geo-jobe.com.
