Alright, so here’s the deal – I’ve never written a blog. But our relentless Marketing Director. yeah, they’ve been after me for a solid month, so here I am! You’re welcome.
Now, the million-dollar question: What the heck do I write about? What could possibly be useful? Something that grabs attention?
Maybe something about yours truly:
06:15 – Alarm. Every. Single. Day. I promise myself I’ll start working out “tomorrow.” Yeah, tomorrow’s always the day.
07:00 – Breakfast! In summer, it’s Rice Krispies with banana; in winter, it’s 60g of oats (yes, I measure it) with 100ml milk and 230ml water. I’m aware I have issues.
07:45 (ish) – Off to work.
08:15 – First stop? Coffee. Essential.
09:00 – 18:00 (ish) – Meetings. Lots of them. Clients, Neem consultants, internal stuff, proposals, RFPs, and interviews. The highlight of my day? Helping people. It’s what consultancy is all about. And at Neem, we’re great at it. Helping clients, helping consultants, helping the management team – it’s a people business, and it’s incredibly rewarding. The team gets such a rush from delivering solutions that clients love. It’s like customer appreciation is our fuel, and we’re fully charged.
Evenings – Dinner with Mrs. MacPherson, kitesurfing in the summer, or just chilling with the telly. Occasionally, fixing something around the house (because adulting never stops).
The kids? They’re 16, 21, 25, and 26 now. So, no more hectic school runs. But instead, we’re helping them move flats and plan weekends away. The day-to-day grind of feeding, bathing, and bedtime is behind us. Now it’s all about the next phase.
Pause before pouncing!
I’m not shy with my opinions. In fact, I’m often jumping in before anyone asks for them! Case in point: I was interviewing an Accessibility Analyst for a tech consulting role. The interview didn’t start great. He was late, the audio and video were subpar, and there was weird background noise. And me being me? I jumped straight in with some… let’s call it constructive feedback. I told him he wasn’t meeting our Neem Interview Standards. He apologised and asked for 10 minutes to sort things out.
Now normally, I’d move on, but for some reason, I didn’t. When he logged back in, everything was better – and then it hit me. He was using a screen reader. The background noise was the screen reader itself, and that was why he wasn’t perfectly framed on the screen – he couldn’t see it clearly!
Yep, I was mortified. I apologised. He was super gracious, and guess what? He went on to be one of our best consultants, delivering stellar accessibility improvements for two years.
Lesson learned: breathe before jumping to conclusions.
I hope that was somewhat useful. Over and out.
Oliver