The Importance of Principals & School Business Managers

Staff Profiles

With more than 200 employees in New Zealand and 2,900 globally, our staff are at the core of what we do. Our people are our most valuable asset and so we encourage our team to lead, collaborate, innovate and enjoy the work that they do.

We interviewed three New Era Technology employees to get an inside glance of their time at New Era and how they got to where they are now. Read below Greg, Steve and Nathaniel’s journeys.

As CEO, New Zealand, Greg Strachan has overseen New Zealand’s education ICT business for around five years. However, he joined the Company 21 years ago in a technical capacity as a Contract Systems Engineer. In this role, his job involved deploying servers and deploying servers and implementing new networks throughout schools. Over the years, he has held various roles; from Solutions Architect, where he helped design solutions that schools required for their internal networks, to managing around 70 staff in the technical team, making sure New Era’s service delivery was up to standard.

Greg Strachan

CEO

During this time, New Era grew significantly, as a result Greg was offered a newly created General Manager position. This gave him the opportunity to expand on his business acumen, people skills, and change management. Now, as the CEO of a business with almost 200 staff, Greg notes

“It’s been a fantastic ride”.

New Era is actively involved in internship programs and Greg believes this provides value to New Era, but also to the intern. He says

“It’s a great place to start your IT career as the experience you receive is very broad and you won’t be stuck doing mundane tasks such as resetting passwords all day.”

When asked about what Greg likes about New Era, he responded,

“We’re first and foremost a people business that delivers IT services – We have a great bunch of people.”

As for the future, Greg is looking forward to continuing to grow and develop the business in New Zealand.

Steve Kea

TECHNICAL TEAM LEADER

Steve is currently a Technical Team Leader based in Auckland and manages a team of around 21 Technicians. Originally from a warehousing and logistics background, Steve believed that the opportunities in ICT were greater. This led him to start his career in ICT by completing studies at Techtorium for about three years. After gaining the relevant knowledge, Steve applied at New Era Technology for a Desktop Network Support Technician role, which he started in June 2018. Towards the end of 2019, Steve took on a mentoring role within the Company, helping interns from Techtorium starting at New Era.

Steve would be assigned to a student who stayed onsite at a school with him once a week. During this time he would share various expertise on things such as the ConnectWise system, how to interact with staff, how to present yourself at the school, and other important dayto-day tasks. Steve is positive about his future within the ICT industry and believes that

What Steve likes about New Era is that no two days are the same as you’re faced with new challenges every day. He believes the internship opportunities New Era provides allows interns to get a front-row seat on how technical services interact with users and gives insight into all aspects of ICT – from networking and software, to setting up hardware devices. Joining in January 2022 as a Service Desk Technician, Nathaniel is enthusiastic about starting his career in the IT industry. Nathaniel’s love for ICT stems back to his childhood where he used to enjoy pulling apart PC’s and trying to put them together again.

If you do your job properly, then opportunities will come your way.

Nathaniel Papalii

SERVICE DESK TECHNICIAN

In Intermediate, he found himself as the resident ICT expert, every time a teacher had an ICT issue, they would call on him to come help fix it. His interest in ICT continued throughout High school where he learned new skills such as creating websites and games. After finishing High School, Nathaniel wanted to explore his passion for ICT further, so studied Computer Engineering at Techtorium.

Nathaniel has spent his spare time tutoring Pasifika students. Combining his passion with ICT and education, New Era Technology was the best company to pursue his career in IT. Since working at New Era, Nathaniel has expanded his IT knowledge and is constantly learning new things. The thing he loves most about working at New Era are the friendships he has formed. He says,

“Everyone is so friendly and caring. On my first day I was so nervous, but so many people came up to me and introduced themselves”.

Nathaniel is very ambitious and as he gains more knowledge, he plans to progress into other areas of the business, such as sales and eventually into senior leadership roles.

Here are some popular tech tips, tricks, and shortcuts to make your life a little easier:

Reopen a closed browser tab

Hit Ctrl+Shift+T on your PC or Command+Shift+T on your Mac to automatically reopen the last tab you just closed.

Search Google with a rightclick

To search a term quickly in most browsers, right-click on the term in your browser and choose the “Search Google” option in the menu. Your browser will open a new tab and show you search results on the topic. The feature works in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. But you won’t yet find it in Microsoft Edge.

Use your scroll wheel to open a new tab

When you want to quickly open a link in a new tab, look to your mouse. After placing your cursor on the link, click down on your scroll wheel. It’ll automatically open the link in a new tab and save you from opening a new tab, copying the link location, and pasting it in your browser.

Use the spacebar to scroll up and down a page

Want to scroll to the bottom of a page quickly? Tapping on the spacebar on a web page will allow you to quickly scroll down. If you want to go back up, hold Shift while you tap the spacebar.

Use quotation marks to narrow your search

If you’re searching for something in Google but getting bogged down with irrelevant results, consider wrapping your query in quotes. By doing so, Google will only show results that exactly match whatever you might have in quotes.

Use “Site:” to find content on a single site

If you’re searching Google but want to look for results in a particular website, try out the search engine’s “Site:” command. From within the Google Search box, type “site:” followed with no space by the site of your choosing. For instance, “site:neweratech.com” without the quotation marks. You can then add a query after the URL and press Enter. Google will then only display relevant results from the site of your choosing.

Use Alt-Tab to rotate through open applications

Quickly jumping between applications on your Windows PC or Mac is simple. To quickly go to another app, hold down the Alt key and Tab keys at the same time. Each time you press the Tab key, you can select another app to open. On the Mac, press the Command and Tab keys to get the same effect.

Use F5 to Refresh A Browser Webpage

Using your mouse and clicking on the refresh button in your browser is a waste of time. If you want to refresh a web page without the hassle, just tap the F5 key on your PC keyboard. The browser will refresh whatever page is active in your browser.

Travelmate Spin B3

KEY FEATURES

• Intel® Celeron® N5100 & Pentium®

Silver N6000 Processor • Windows 11 Home / Pro Academic • 11.6" HD IPS Touch

Up to 8GB DDR4 memory2 • Up to 256GB SSD storage2 • Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi 6 AX201 • Up to 10 hours battery life1 • Weight: 1.49kg2 • 3 year education warranty

COMPLIANT MIL-STD 810H MIL-STD 810H Compliant

Powered by Intel® Celeron® N5100 & Pentium® Silver N6000 Processor

360� Hinge Keyboard with mechanically anchored keys Spill-Resistant Keyboard

N/A Dual-Facing Camera

Acer Chromebook 511

Convertible Convertible Keyboard with Mechanically Anchored Key Spill-Resistant Keyboard with Keyboard Mechanically Anchored Key

N/A

Spill-Resistant Keyboard Dual Cameras

KEY FEATURES

• Intel® Celeron® Dual-Core N4500 processor • Chrome OS • 11.6" HD IPS display • 4GB LPDDR4X (Onboard) • eMMC 32GB • Up to 12 hours battery life1 • 3 year education warranty

COMPLIANT MIL-STD 810H U.S MIL-STD 810H Compliant

Powered by Intel® Celeron® Processors

Unpackaged drop up to 122cm Spill-Resistant Keyboard Moisture Resistant Touchpad Keyboard with mechanically anchored keys

N/A Wide Field of View Webcam

Our Partners

Our partners are, without exception, leaders in their fields and work closely with us to ensure our clients are provided with consistently excellent outcomes.

Notes: