Employee Spotlight: Joel

Employee Spotlight:

Joel Caskey
Senior Technology Business Engineer
NET Xperts LLC


Joel Caskey is a Senior Technology Business Engineer at NET Xperts LLC. He has been a part of the NET Xperts crew for 13 years. Get to know Joel better!

  1. What do you enjoy most about working at NET Xperts? Being able to have conversations with our customers, being able to talk to different people every day, and being able to have the opportunity to learn something new every day.
  2. Where are you from? A small town east of Pittsburgh. Irwin, PA, the biggest small town in Pennsylvania.
  3. What’s the best place you’ve traveled to and why? Walt Disney World, that is my vacation spot. To be fair, I haven’t traveled out of the country yet, but I do have some things on my list. I would like to go and see the Bahamas- somewhere warm and tropical. Right now, though, Disney World is my place- good food, good drinks, good entertainment, good weather, can’t ask for much more!
  4. What have you gained by working at NET Xperts? There is so much. I started working at NET Xperts when I was 22, so I was a fresh pup. I have gained so much in working with customers, developing these business relationships, developing trust. Being able to recommend the solutions that go along with what our customers do. One thing that I love about being able to go out to different customer sites is, I get to see not only how IT works, but also how it works in different industries. I get the opportunity to see different industries and how they interact and how the IT fits into and helps to build on that foundation.
  5. If you won the lottery, what’s the first thing you would do? Lifetime Disney World park passes.
  6. What does a typical day look like for you? No such thing! My days are different every day that I come in here. Pretty much the only thing that is consistent about my day is whenever I come into the office, I have a cup of coffee in the morning. It’s literally different every day, there’s no typical day in my world- which makes it fun!
  7. What’s the craziest thing you’ve either done or seen before? I like the story of when I saw a stolen car get dumped somewhere. Call it a hunch, I was sitting in a parking lot at 6AM waiting, and I saw this car roll up next to the building and they parked it in a corner. They kind of just let it sit, walked away from it- headlights on and everything and I thought “something doesn’t seem right.” When it was still there hours later, I called State Police and they came down and looked at it and they said “yeah, that’s definitely stolen”. That’s probably one of the craziest things I’ve seen.
  8. What music is on your phone? I have such a hodge-podge. I listen to anything from 80’s rock to 70’s rock to classical, to jazz. I’m all over the place. I was in marching band in high school, so I have a musical background. I have quite the eccentric music taste.
  9. Do you have a motto/personal mantra? “Never, never assume. Always double check.” That one’s from Tom, our Client Services Manager. Also, “just take one day at a time.”
  10. Favorite thing to do in your free time? During the summer I like to be outside, so you’ll find me in the pool, at the beach, at the lake, etc… During this winter, I’ll be spending a lot of time visiting museums, trying to take in some culture. I like to eat, that’s one of my favorite hobbies.
  11. What’s one thing you can’t resist? Are we talking about food or in general? From a food standpoint, I love a good steak and seafood. From a general standpoint, if somebody came to me and said “hey, I’m going to Disney for a week, do you want to go?”, zero hesitation- let’s go.
  12. Favorite movie? Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favorite classical Disney movies. I’m a soundtrack kind of guy, so the music from the Beauty and the Beast just gets me every time.
  13. Favorite book?  Typically, whenever I’m reading, it’s for a technical purpose. For a leisure book, when I was growing up, I always liked the Goosebumps books and the Choose Your Own Adventure books, but I used to work those backwards. I would find the ending I wanted to come out to and work my way backwards through the story line until I could get there. That’s how my mind works- find the end result and figure out how to get there. I think that says a lot about how I got into the industry and how my mindset works when it comes to IT.
  14. Favorite drink to order at the bar? Long Island Iced Tea is my go-to. The infamous Rum & Coke is my go-to at a party. As far as a good summery drink, I love a good tropical drink.
  15. Would you rather be a tiny elephant or a giant hamster? I’d probably rather be a tiny elephant, only because elephants never forget, and I’d love to be able to have a good memory. You don’t have to be big to be strong.
  16. Lastly, what advice do you have for businesses during Covid-19? A lot of businesses right now are still working remotely. Safe business practices are number one, so if you’re in the office, make sure you’re doing what you need to do to be safe. If you’re working from home, make sure you’re doing it securely. Take a couple minutes to think about your security “Have I changed passwords recently?” “What information is going across the internet?” “How am I communicating with my staff?” One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen is that many people don’t want to necessarily use resources that have video chat when they’re working with their colleagues. It’s so important to have that face-to-face interaction- it was an absolute game changer when we were working from home. It’s a little bit more personal. You get the face-to-face, the human interaction, the body language, the facial expressions. It says a lot whenever you’re talking to somebody.

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