Connect Series: Meet Shishi Fan
Shishi is Reportex’s production coordinator. She has the responsibility of printing, assembling, and couriering all legal transcripts and making sure they are delivered to our clients on time. She is also responsible for providing clients with invoices for reporter-attended proceedings, medical transcriptions, and mediations.
Shishi is a true-blue Vancouverite (born and raised here) and another indispensable HQ staffer.
Your talents are in great demand at Reportex. What personality traits do you believe are most important for the role of production coordinator?
It’s hard to pick one in particular, but the ones that come to my mind are adaptability, persistence, and patience. There are many small pieces in my job, so I need all three of these traits to set a schedule for the day (and/or week) to juggle and determine the priority of said tasks. If certain tasks don’t get done in a day, they will snowball into a little mountain, and I’ll find myself trying to dig out of the mess later. If I have to pick just one, then I will say persistence. You need persistence standing in front of a mountain of transcripts, persistence in getting answers from clients, persistence in staring at numbers on invoices every day, and persistence in chasing fellow co-workers for their coffee orders every Friday.
All in all, I would say you need to be a good multitasker with a weird memory reminding you of things that Slack reminders don’t.
At Reportex our core values of team, mentorship, equality, community, and industry are central to what we do. Which of these values resonates most with you and why?
I would say team and community. I feel I am working with a highly efficient team that helps me while I help them out too. I can’t do my job without my fellow colleagues, and I know they rely on me as well. We have so many people working in Reportex doing their own things now, and Reportex needs every one of us. I can still remember the days when I had to share an office with Kim and Max. I’m delighted to see how much the Reportex team has expanded.
We have been discussing wellness on the blog and our internal Slack channels. Do you have a favourite way to recharge or any tips to share on staying well, especially during these COVID months?
It’s no big secret, but my favourite way of recharging is definitely napping. And not just any napping — I feel the best napping is on weekend afternoons with the guilty pleasure of wasting the best sun hours away. I don’t see the need to force myself out in those best sun hours if it’s not in me. I think what’s most important is to feel comfortable and allow yourself to feel comfortable. After a good recharge nap, I will get up again and get going on my tasks for the day. And then at the end of the day I can reward myself with some snacks. I go through a cycle of work, rest, work, rest because inevitably I will burn out if all I do is work, work, work without thanking and rewarding myself in some way.
So yes, I do talk to myself in my head occasionally saying Shishi, if you finish this task, you can go eat some of that chocolate; it’s waiting for you; you can do it!!
We all need a bit of encouragement to get through the days sometimes, and chocolate sounds like a great way to reward ourselves!
