Getting a job in the computer industry

[Delvis]

How basic is "first-line support"? Is it literally on the phone and telling people how to i dunno, change their browsers homepage? Minimum wage i'm guessing?

Depends on the company, it can be yes.

Then in other places you won't have a say in things, and you will HAVE to read from a scripted book.

EDIT: What would be nice is to join a company as a 1st line but take all the calls, and theoretically be able to dabble in 2nd line calls to up your experience even more

 

[powlesY]

What, and say you try to help a customer in a better easier to follow way that's not in the book... it's frowned upon?

Would i get away with "wait 2mins please" and then going and taking a ****?

 

[gettothechopper]

if people are "getting stuck" on first line, then either they need to work harder or move companies
when I worked in 2nd line, the 1st line dudes we worked with where always moving off to higher up teams, the "less" useful people will indeed stay there forever!

if you are "getting stuck" you need to change companies, any helpdesk that doesnt use people correctly isnt worth working for anyway, and you'll have a much better chance of getting a 2nd line job somewhere else with a year or two of 1st line on your cv

edit : above post - depends on the company, some (decent ones) will let you do it and would reward that sort of thing
rubbish ones read from scripts and thats it

 

[Xelene]

Avoid helldesk like the plague - it's not a technical position, it's barely IT, it's soul destroying and you will have a hard time getting out of it.

If you are dead set on IT, you are best off finding a small company that needs a generic computer bloke and do a bit of this and that for a couple of years finding yourself a niche. You can then leverage that to get in at a junior-mid position at a corporate in your chosen field.

Good thing about Small Companies not only arre they everywhere but they are typically willing (once the basics are sorted) to work with emerging tech - so you get a couple of years experience working with stuff the big boys will heavily invest in in a couple of years.

It worked for me with Web systems, and a cousin I advised to focus on virtualisation a few years back has also built a career on this foundation. Local business link & chamber of commerce are your friend here.

 

[Pestilence]

If you are dead set on IT, you are best off finding a small company that needs a generic computer bloke and do a bit of this and that for a couple of years finding yourself a niche. You can then leverage that to get in at a junior-mid position at a corporate in your chosen field.

Agreed with this. Find a small-to-medium business in need of a general IT bod to take care of most things in the office, for example one of a small service desk team of 2 or 3 "first line" people who field the calls and do most of the user support/email management etc.

This will give you some experience with things you won't already be familiar with, for example these days it can open you up to network management (dealing with switches, patching etc.), hardware roll-out and systems such as SCCM, IP telephony and much more. It also keeps you out of designated ITIL first line role, ie. ticket monkey. You'll move up much faster that way, or gain more valuable experience to move to a larger corporate in a more specialist environment.

 

[Energize]

I'm not entirely sure what area to start in but I know I will be avoiding helpdesk positions at all costs. There are a couple of small business that I use that are potentially looking for a typical computer guy which seems like a good bet.

 

[Xelene]

I'm not entirely sure what area to start in but I know I will be avoiding helpdesk positions at all costs. There are a couple of small business that I use that are potentially looking for a typical computer guy which seems like a good bet.

You could perhaps negotiate a job sharing deal with them, couple of days a week for each of them. On your way to running your own consultancy then...

 

[Deleted member 66701]

Terrible advice. If you're good then it's a fantastic sector to work in, it's taken me all over the world. If you're lazy and don't move around then there probably aren't many great opportunities. I imagine in your case there is a bit of stalemate going on - the company won't get rid of you because you are a union rep and you won't get a decent job anywhere else because your only skill is that you're a union rep so you're stuck in a boring dead end IT job. Thats the impression you give off anyway.

Haha - zero for one cowboy - full set of Prince2 and ITIL practioner qualifications thank you very much - wouldn't have a problem working anywhere else.

I'm in my fifth role in IT and this will be the fifth role that's been off shored. I've had enough - emigrating to Canada this winter. I'll be a house husband as the wife has landed a good role at a college over there (she's always been the main earner - deputy head of a primary school currently).

 

[FoxEye]

Avoid helldesk like the plague - it's not a technical position, it's barely IT, it's soul destroying and you will have a hard time getting out of it.

I'm currently working for my local council, and some of the guys/gals on helpdesk do appear to be non-technical. There are good people there, but helpdesk is not normally talked about kindly by the other IT folks I talk to.

They do appear generally to just have a book of procedures which they follow; one procedure for each type of op they perform, and don't seem to do any problem-solving. If anything needs a technical eye cast upon it, helpdesk pass it on to 2nd line, from what I've seen.

 

[Delvis]

I'm currently working for my local council, and some of the guys/gals on helpdesk do appear to be non-technical. There are good people there, but helpdesk is not normally talked about kindly by the other IT folks I talk to.

They do appear generally to just have a book of procedures which they follow; one procedure for each type of op they perform, and don't seem to do any problem-solving. If anything needs a technical eye cast upon it, helpdesk pass it on to 2nd line, from what I've seen.

Thats the thing, there is THAT kind of 1st line Helpdesk, then there is the kind where you can be 1st point of contact, but do almost everything because you either have to/want to

As said, try find a small IT service business, you will learn shed loads in six months. Or join a school as a techy, depends what your current knowledge is

 

[mattyfez]

It really depends on the company as said, first line can be a scripted affair with pretty much no thought involved, or it can be much more involving, for example, the first point if contact scenario mentioned above - I worked for a large organisations where there was no 2nd or 3rd line, there's just a single point helpdesk backed up by specialist teams, server, network, on site techies, etc.

This is probably the sort of thing you want, as you learn a lot from the other teams that you can use to increase your first time fix ratios, and you get to chair conference calls between various teams to get to the bottom of an issue, so you get some exposure to the ITSM side of things, incident and problem management, that kind of thing.

But like I said, it depends on the company structure, 1st line can literally mean what I call 'logging and flogging' which won't be much fun, although at least you can say you have experience in a commercial IT role.

 

[mattyfez]

Double post

 

[powlesY]

I feel with my knowledge that first-line support is a fair bit below what i'd want, elitist i know but you've gotta start somewhere i guess.

I'd love to just come up with a kick-ass idea on the web and make a shedload of money, but don't we all?

 

[gettothechopper]

I feel with my knowledge that first-line support is a fair bit below what i'd want, elitist i know but you've gotta start somewhere i guess.

I'd love to just come up with a kick-ass idea on the web and make a shedload of money, but don't we all?

to be fair getting a job in 1st line for you would not be about your knowledge level, but about getting experience, and getting your foot in the door
not to say you couldnt just walk into a 2nd line job, but just that its going to be much harder to