Christopher Handisides Email & Phone Number

Clayton, Vic, Au

Sandringham

Administrative support provided to the planning and building departments, which were known in council under the umbrella term of ‘Development Services’. The role also included customer service in resolving queries by phone, email or at front counter. Typical daily duties included preparing public notification (advertising) for planning proposals, processing VCAT documentation regarding planning decisions, providing building permit documents to applicants, registering new planning applications and further administrative tasks in relation to SPEAR (subdivisions) or pool and spa registrations. This list is not exhaustive. The customer service element to this role required some basic industry knowledge and some understanding of the different functions of local government. This role has broadened my understanding of the different professionals and processes that are involved in shaping the urban environment. There was the opportunity to sit in on VCAT hearings related to planning matters and training days from the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA). I was also responsible for writing and maintaining the process guides for what the administration team used. These processes were kept and updated within the process mapping tool ‘Promapp’. Other transferable skills from this role include heavy use of Microsoft Office, GIS software (specifically Intramaps) and the record management software TRIM. I resigned from the role to focus on my studies, which I had started on a part-time basis while working full-time.

Melbourne, Australia

This was a contract role which ended in January 2017, however I continued to be employed on a casual basis working periodically as required. The activities of CPA Australia follow an annual cycle so the exact function of my role varied according to the time of year. For example, the flagship event ‘Congress’, which is a series of training workshops and seminars for accounting and finance professionals is organised in the middle of the year to take place in October. Member renewals take place from October to early January. Generally, my duties included data entry, record keeping, processing payments (via phone, reconciling EFT, cheques, etc), responding to general queries about events or membership (usually by email but sometimes via phone), assessments of applications for membership fee reductions based on mitigating circumstances and processing student requests to join CPA Australia.

Sydney, Australia

After returning from the regional work (farms), I returned to ISS, where some of the work still involved updating databases as previously, but main function of role was to work on a front desk for the environmental services department during the afternoon's, meaning staff working later shifts still had a point of contact available. Role involved taking calls from wards or employees, giving out stock, providing assistance in creating rosters and record keeping as appropriate. This was a fixed term contract.

Sydney, Australia

After a number of causal jobs after arriving in Australia, this was my first regular full time position. Role was to go through paper records and identify what training records were available and whom they related to. I then created electronic records for everything and found (in a number of electronic locations) further evidence and records of training completed by employees and collated them into a database. As that database grew and people continued to complete training, I added the evidence of that training to the database. As the database was completed, it was then necessary to identify who had what requirements for training and identify what was missing or due for renewal, using Excel formulas and formatting. To assist in supervisors and managers from different departments, reports were created on the different findings as the job progressed. I left this position to complete the regional (farm) work that was required at that time to stay in Australia longer term.

Andover

Contracting role where there were no fixed hours but quotas of cases to assess on a weekly basis. The cases were complaints of mis-sold PPI (insurance) on various financial products, submitted by customers or third party agents on their behalf. The assessment of cases involved collating all the information provided by the customer and what was held by the bank, then to contact the customer to provide further evidence if necessary and then decide whether to uphold their complaint or defend the sale of insurance. As well as a lot of customer contact, the position involved a lot of data entry (to a high degree of accuracy), use of MS Office and a lot of holistic and analytical thinking as sometimes decisions would be made on the basis of plausibility in the absence of evidence.

Liverpool, United Kingdom

Following experience in contact centres and in banking, I started working at Barclays as a Claims Handler. As the banking sector were redressing mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) applied to loans and mortgages, Claims Handler’s were required to calculate and process refunds. This was done by collating ledgers on loans and other products and entering them into calculators designed for the different products and scenario's. The calculated refund would then be transferred into a cheque or a customer's personal account and we would write a letter to the customer (and other interested parties if applicable) outlining what was paid. There were many other variables within each refund, which often resulted in having to call other departments or customers, such as if they still had loans outstanding, what would be refunded if the bank had previously written money off, bankrupt customers and more. The job also involved some data entry, as the main function of the role was to move money, a high degree of accuracy and attention to detail was required.