Jean Duchesne

I'd like to take the opportunity of this last blog to thank AXEREAL and AXEREAL Elevage for supporting me in my professional reconversion, and for introducing me to life in the IT department of an international agricultural cooperative!

It was a particularly rewarding year, allowing me to discover the job of an IT technician and the day-to-day workings of an IT department. It enabled me to find my career path and decide to specialize in systems and network administration, while managing IT projects.

I would like to thank my apprenticeship supervisor and my work colleagues for the time they devoted to me and for their invaluable advice. I would also like to thank the communications department for their help in writing these blogs.

Last but not least, I'd like to thank AXEREAL for their confidence in me, and I hope our paths will cross again!

Storing data in secure locations is an important part of any strategy to guard against cyberattacks.

It’s something I was interested to learn more about as part of my apprenticeship.

This project is particularly interesting because it offered me opportunities to hone a range of skills spanning both technical knowledge and project management (helping a user to define their need and find a suitable strategy, as well as working with a service provider that was developing a part of the solution).

In addition, I really enjoyed putting in place a project to meet a user’s needs and then observing the concrete results with them.

This work falls under the heading of security and data resilience, meaning that my project contributes to Axereal’s cybersecurity strategy. With the cyber environment becoming increasingly sensitive, cybersecurity is currently a hot topic for businesses.

It’s something that all company IT departments work on every single day, in a variety of ways. These can be anything from helping a user to identify a fraudulent email to developing a strategy to safeguard industrial data. In my opinion, it’s vital that all IT staff are trained on these issues.

During January, an IT department colleague who had been with Axereal Elevage for five years left us for pastures new.

Their permanent replacement won’t be joining us for a few weeks yet, so we have a colleague from an external agency with us to bridge the gap. This has been an opportunity for me to test out my knowledge of the IT environment by training this colleague and helping them to become familiar with the job.

We trained them in how the IT department runs day-to-day. I was specifically allocated a number of topics: user support, preparing and setting up workstations, and monitoring and updating procedures.

It was an interesting challenge and a good opportunity to take stock of what I’ve learned since I’ve been in this role. And especially to see how far I still have to go!

Last March, I was still working as a biology teacher in a local high school. I made the decision to change careers and move into IT, specifically network and systems administration. I stopped working for Clermont-Ferrand education authority and began an intense period of independent learning, with the objective of starting both a job and a university course in September 2022.

In June, I had an interview with some staff from Axereal Elevage IT at Saint-Germain-de-Salles for a job as an apprentice in their team. Despite my unusual career path and limited experience, they put their trust in me, agreeing to support me through my career change over the next year.

Since September, I have been helping Elisabeth and Sébastien with their day-to-day workload, and in return they’re training me on the tools used in the company.

I’m very happy to be working in the Axereal Elevage IT department, because I’m picking up plenty of relevant technical skills, learning to use all the important tools and seeing first-hand how a large company operates.