Matt Firmston

                       

• 🌱 - I just finished a coding boot camp with Makers Academy
• 💻 - I'm currently looking for a Junior Developer role
• 🎯 - My aim is to become a full stack Developer
• 👯 - I love to collaborate
• 🧩 - I love to solve problems

Background

I am a recent Makers Academy graduate with a background as a specialist of many different brands and ranges within the toy industry, including Nerf, Star Wars, LeapFrog, yo-yo, circus toys, and more. All of these roles focussed on communicating effectively with kids and parents. I was successful enough that I worked my way up to a store manager position (see work experience section) where I honed many more skills such as leadership, conflict resolution, decision making and more.

I studied music at college and university (see education section) and worked as a session musician briefly afterwards. Working in a band has taught me a lot such as time management, teamwork, and discipline. I am a very creative person and still write and perform music to this day.

My passion for coding developed during the second lockdown. I have always enjoyed learning new skills and was seeking a new challenge, having already learnt how to unicycle, play guitar, skateboard, juggle, solve rubik’s cubes (I could go on, see hobbies section), so I finally turned to code. After a few months I had already built a basic web application and I realised that this was something that I wanted to do full time.

Projects

Skills

Teamwork/Communication: My ability to interact with anyone, old or young, due to my previous experience as a toy specialist has made me highly effective at working in a team in an agile way and also building rapport with pairing partners while at Makers.

Languages/tools: I mainly default to Ruby, HTML and CSS using the Ruby on Rails framework, but I also feel comfortable using JavaScript as is demonstrated by my final project at Makers which was created using React.js on the front end and Node.js on the back end.

Problem solving: Working in retail management I was regularly having to come up with solutions to unexpected problems. This has obviously helped me greatly while learning to code as I feel much more adept at solving coding problems as well.

Adaptable: I have experience in adapting to different situations. For example, in my last job I was a manager of a small circus store in Camden. It ranged from extremely busy on weekends to very quiet (sadly retail struggled through the pandemic) so I've learnt to work well as part of a team or as an individual.

Creativity: I love being creative as is demonstrated by my being a musician and writing my own music. I also love to be creative with code and enjoy exploring design and style ideas using CSS.

Education

Makers Academy (June to September 2021)

• I used my teamwork and communication skills to work effectively while pair programming and working in groups employing an Agile methodology.
• My skills in time-management helped me to optimise my self-learning.
• My love of learning and ability to learn rapidly allowed me to be successful in integrating a completely new tech stack to use in my final project.
• I took on two students from a later cohort to mentor, putting into practice my emotional intelligence and empathy in order to create an optimal learning environment.

ICMP/K college - BA Contemporary Music Performance (2011 - 2014)

• My discipline and ability to practice well earnt me a distinction grade overall with a distinction in guitar grade 8 and drums grade 7.
• As a band leader I developed leadership, teamwork and communication skills.
• I practiced my creativity skills by writing and performing music (This is something I still do today with Band of Wizzards).

Work experience

Oddballs (March 2018 to June 2021) - Store Manager

• I managed staff including their training, hours, contracts and of course their well being. This further developed my leadership skills, time management and emotional intelligence and empathy.
• I used my communication skills with both customers and staff, always trying to lead by example. My usual method of training staff how to help customers was by doing so myself and opening up dialogue with staff as to what made different interactions with customers successful or not.
• Being a circus store I still managed to practice my hobbies such as juggling, unicycling, yo-yo and more. This in turn made me successful in creating a happy and creative environment where customers wanted to come back to, and staff could be the best version of themselves.

Hamleys (October 2014 to March 2018) - Toy Expert

• Because of my ability to adapt, I was able to move around and work in lots of different areas of the store. Some of the areas I specialised in include Nerf, outdoor toys, STEM and educational toys, Star Wars, Lego and of course circus.
• My passion for learning led me to taking on extra training which in turn led me to me often supervising the floor I was working on. Some of the training I received included first aid, fire marshall, child development and team leading.

Hobbies

Skateboarding: Skateboarding has taught me resilience. In order to learn new tricks I constantly have to put myself at risk of injury, and therefore, further outside of my comfort zone. Although skateboarding is a very physical activity, it's biggest challenge is a mental one: Battling with fear, which helps me to better myself in all aspects of life.

Music: I love writing and performing music. I specialise with guitar but I have focused enough on music theory that I can pick up most instruments and learn to play something fairly quickly. My love of learning stemmed from music in the first place, seeing musicians on stage and letting it motivate me to do the same.

Circus: As mentioned many times above, I love learning new skills. My favorite circus skill is passing clubs; Learning to juggle as a pair (or even a group). It's always fun sharing new tricks and ideas, and there seems like no limit to the possibilities.

Puzzles: I do love to problem solve, and that show’s in the type of games I play, for example, My favourite PC game is a bomb defusal game (Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes). I also love to solve rubik's cubes, nonograms, codewars and cssbattle challenges.

Where to find me

LinkedIn | Intagram | Codewars | CSS battle | Stack overflow