Getting a job with a help desk?

June 17, 2007 2:57 PM

I'm looking for advice on moving into a computer help desk position.

I'm in my early thirties, and although I'm pleased with my current position as a legal secretary for a large multicity law firm, I'm also conscious of the fact that I don't want to be in my forties or fifties and still be a legal secretary. So, I've been thinking about my interests and skills, and trying to figure out what I might be best at.

It occurred to me that I might be suited for a computer help desk. As a legal secretary, I've always had sort of a sixth sense about computer problems, via both inductive and deductive reasoning, and I've got a pretty strong set of skills when it comes to Microsoft Office programs. Although I'm more of a Mac user than a Windows user, I am not too concerned about learning what I would need to when it would come to the finer intricacies of Windows-based tech solutions, based on my occasional experiences trying to help my parents over phone lines with basic Windows stuff, and my ability to learn and to pick up computer know-how very quickly. (Frankly, there have been quite a few occasions at past jobs where I've dealt with help desk people who really seemed to have no computer know-how whatsoever.) Also, I type 120+ wpm -- I can't imagine that's as helpful at a help desk as it is in administrative work, but it couldn't hurt.

My concerns are ...

Salary ... I definitely could not stand to take a pay cut, however -- in fact, my hope would be that this would be a pay boost, so I'm trying to get a sense of average pay in Chicago for this position.

Entry requirements ... My college degree is not in computer work -- it's in (believe it or not) theater. I did do computer help desk as my work-study throughout most of college, though, although that's about 11 years in the past now. I don't see myself returning to college anytime soon: student loans and credit card debts make that a poor choice at the moment. Is this a field one can break into without a computer-related degree? And, as I know education determines salary, would my lack of a computer degree make the pay too low to be palatable?

Job satisfaction ... How long do people last in this field, and do they enjoy themselves while in it? Or are we talking air-traffic-controller style burnout? Part of the reason I think I'm well-suited for this is I kind of like walking people through a problem and getting them back on their feet ... I liked being the "if you need help, ask this guy" informal-help-desk kinda guy at most of my jobs.

I also think this might be useful in terms of getting me in touch with Chicago-based geek culture and in terms of making friends with people with similar interest. Is help-desk work connective with geek culture, or is it "mainstream"?

Anything else you might be willing to share would be appreciated.

posted by WCityMike to computers & internet (10 comments total)

I've been doing Windows based Helpdesk/IT work for the past 10+ years in a variety of different sized jobs (from small 5 computer shops to my last contract which was a 600 workstation network school district)

From the sound of your description, it sounds like you have the right attitude. If you are a curious person who gets thrills doing technical problem solving type things, and satisfaction of getting people "back up and running".. then you should do well at Helpdesk/IT stuff.

I cant answer your salary question, because I'm not anywhere near the chicago area, but my off-hand guess would be that a starting Helpdesk position will not pay anything close to a legal secretary (but I could be wrong, and obviously it depends on what position (with what company) you find)

That goes the same for the "burnout" question, alot of it depends on the company you find to work for and the environment they stick you in. If you start by doing something like traditional phone-support in a small cubicle where you are required to take a certain # of calls a day - there will probably be burnout. My advice would be to find a smaller company where you can be mentored by another tech and spend some time each day doing "hands-on" deskside support. You'll learn more that way and it'll be less stress. The hard part is finding a small company that has the right attitude/environment about investing in you.

Do you have the time/space/money to play with some extra equipment at home ?... If you are truly interested and passionate about computers, have 1 (or 2) extra sitting around at home that you can tear apart, rebuild and reinstall various things on to play with.

Hard to advise you on meeting other geeks (becuase I've been in teh culture for so long)..I meet alot of geeks through Fark.com or Slashdot... places like that. I'm sure there are probably "meetup" type groups around Chi town if you look hard enough.
posted by jmnugent at 3:36 PM on June 17, 2007

I have worked on help desks for US companies, although I have never been based directly in the US.

I don't really know what my US counterparts get paid but generally corporate help desks get paid about as much as developers, etc with the same experience. Right now the market for help desk people is a sellers market - there are lots of jobs, and while a few years ago most people had degrees or two-year diplomas (some in engineering and computer science) the standard now is considerably lower.

Some people do well on the help desk, many move on to another position off the help desk as soon as possible. The positions turn over I would say about 50% in a year, somewhat more or less depending on how good the client is. Some people enjoy it, but one winds up dealing with a lot of pissed off people and sometimes they are looking to blame things on you. Because of this, you have to be really thorough with documentation and sometimes a high tolerance for deailng with miserable people with tact and diplomacy. Probably the part you don't know about is volumes, this will depend on how your helpdesk is structured but don't be suprised to get 30-60 tech support calls in a 7.5 hour workday and you usually have to have service levels somewhere above 90% (sometimes above 99%).

Help Desk is generally not part of geek culture. You wind up working with a lot of tech stuff (since you are the central point of contact) but it tends to have less gosh wow appeal after you have taken say 10 Treo calls a day for the last 8 months or been yelled at for two hours when the cool new software release ended up rebooting a file server in the middle of the day. It is good for keeping you on the leading edge technically speaking. Overall, a lot of help desk folks wind up doing high-level server/tool support or systems/business analysis when they get off the desk.

It will be stressful, especially at first but if you work hard and pay attention you will learn a lot and build yourself a good future.
posted by Deep Dish at 3:44 PM on June 17, 2007

Deep Dish
"I don't really know what my US counterparts get paid but generally corporate help desks get paid about as much as developers, etc with the same experience."

I have never found this to be true. Most Helpdesk/IT positions that I've worked (or interviewed for) pay alot less than development jobs. Most companies/employers look at development positions as specific skillsets (coding java, or database development,etc) and pay accordingly. Alternatively, they view Helpdesk/IT positions as "hey, its 2007, doesnt everyone know computer stuff, we can afford to pay them much less."

"Probably the part you don't know about is volumes, this will depend on how your helpdesk is structured but don't be suprised to get 30-60 tech support calls in a 7.5 hour workday and you usually have to have service levels somewhere above 90% (sometimes above 99%)."

This is why I advise spending some quality time looking (dont rush into anything) and find the job you are sure you would like that doesnt involve call-quotas. I was unemployed for 6 months refusing jobs right and left before i found the one I have now working for a small local ISP doing a night-shift monitoring their data-center. Its perfect, the people are way cool, its low-volume, low-stress and leaves my days open to do freelance work and school.
posted by jmnugent at 3:51 PM on June 17, 2007

I have never found this to be true. Most Helpdesk/IT positions that I've worked (or interviewed for) pay alot less than development jobs. Most companies/employers look at development positions as specific skillsets (coding java, or database development,etc) and pay accordingly. Alternatively, they view Helpdesk/IT positions as "hey, its 2007, doesnt everyone know computer stuff, we can afford to pay them much less."

Could be a regional thing, or that I am an analyst now and not on the front lines - I was also dealing with very large. complex organizations with a number of mission critical systems (with 3000+ users and some of the biggest server farms on the west coast). A lot of this is going to depend on the organization. I know I would not trade paycheques with devs.

I also like using all the stats based stuff - it was a great way for me to go into my salary reviews - I could say "I hit my SLA's, my resolution rate was above average and I took more calls than average."
posted by Deep Dish at 4:09 PM on June 17, 2007

Deep Dish
"I also like using all the stats based stuff - it was a great way for me to go into my salary reviews - I could say "I hit my SLA's, my resolution rate was above average and I took more calls than average."

I've never worked for companies that big, but I have worked for companies that judged everything by call stats, SLA's and other acronyms. I did it for as long as I could until I began to see the trend of driving home every night hoping a semi-truck would swerve into my lane....

I quit that job and spent the last 6 months reading books like:
Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams
Mavericks @ Work - Where the most original minds in business win
Founders at Work - Stories of Startups early days

..so even though i'm now working alot more (now have 5 jobs).. they are all things I immensely enjoy, the environments are all relaxed (no dress code, no fancy position titles, no corporate bureaucracy)... and I actually feel like I'm accomplishing something for myself, instead of wasting my life away working for the man.
posted by jmnugent at 4:31 PM on June 17, 2007

I used to be a corporate help desk person. I made $35k at the time and had a lot of perks. The other help desk positions were at universities that paid $30k and had a lot of really really great perks.

A lot of Help Desk people get burnt out really really easily. After a few years, you're sick of answering the same questions.

Your degree won't matter. Having GREAT customer service skills will.
posted by k8t at 5:05 PM on June 17, 2007

Salary ... I definitely could not stand to take a pay cut, however -- in fact, my hope would be that this would be a pay boost, so I'm trying to get a sense of average pay in Chicago for this position.

You will most certainly have to take a pay cut if you're entering this field with little or no experience. We're talking wage-slave levels here. Minimum wage up to $15 or so an hour is what seems typical in and around Chicago.

Is this a field one can break into without a computer-related degree?

Yes, help desk has always been the one area of IT where a computer-related degree (or any degree for that matter) was not so much of a requirement. They are pretty much looking for anyone who can pass a drug test and read from a script now a days...

would my lack of a computer degree make the pay too low to be palatable?

In my experience companies looking to staff help desk positions are looking for aptitude and work ethic rather than a specific degree. They will have their own procedures and practices and will train you. That said, I wouldn't expect any sort of computer-related degree to garner more pay for such an entry level position.

How long do people last in this field, and do they enjoy themselves while in it?

Turn over tends to be high - perhaps 60%. This is do to a number of factors. For many people (recent college grads for example) these tend to be transitional jobs. Other people come in hoping for some IT tract and actually get lucky so they move into information systems or administration or whatever. The few who remain are lifers.

Not saying that you couldn't make a career out of it, but generally thats not what most people do.

Is help-desk work connective with geek culture, or is it "mainstream"?

Er... well because the work is generally considered "entry level" it attracts people from all different backgrounds. I'd say that 10 or 15 years ago, sure - this type of market would be packed with nerds, but today it is very much a service industry with established procedures.

The crummy analogy I would make would be to say, "I want to hang out with food connoisseur and world class chefs, should I work at a truck stop dinner?"

Keep in mind that help desk is increasingly a part of the industry which is in flux. As a help desk employee you're not like a "real" employee of the company - in that you're not directly making the company money. As such you're often considered expendable and entire departments can be relocated or shut down on a whim. Add in some off shoring, the increasingly educated workforce, and a career in help desk doesn't look very secure.

At least that's my opinion looking ahead five or ten years.

Keep looking.
posted by wfrgms at 5:12 PM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]

I help manage and work on a helpdesk. In fact, I've worked in helpdesk for a lot of my professional career. I can offer a perspective.

It's important to define what you mean by "helpdesk." It can mean a _lot_ of things. My helpdesk is a very small company (4 people) that provides helpdesk style services to IT companies. An IT Company will hire us to answer the phone for their clients' users. We don't use scripts. We are mainly Tier-1, in that we handle break-fix issues (applications, desktop stuff), but unless the IT company tells us something specific, we will try to do anything. We do server administration, server break-fix, DNS changes, Citrix break-fix, system setup, Exchange break-fix, etc. Realistically, we're more Tier-1 to Tier-2 than we are strictly Tier-1, but we're flexible depending upon what our clients need. (We use remote desktop technology to do the majority of what we do.)

That is one type of helpdesk. Other types of helpdesks include a helpdesk in a single organization. That might entail walking to users desktop or troubleshooting server issues. It also might include outsourced helpdesk where you take calls for a particular company at a remote location. You may or may not have the power to do much beyond a few things depending upon how the client wants things to work.

I made the transition into a full helpdesk position through the printing industry. When I started in printing in the early 90s, the industry was undergoing a change in that, for the first time, people could buy off-the-shelf computers to run the various operations. I was there when that happened for a lot of companies and wound up being the "computer guy" for them. I worked for either service bureaus or presses until I went to work for a RIP manufacturer where I took support calls over the phone. I left printing to work for myself as a tech. I did that for three years in the Boston area until my wife and I decided to leave Boston for Houston. I went to work for my current company, sold my business, and now work remotely.

I could not do this work if I could not be effective. For me, "effective" means I need to be able to solve problems and help people. I will not work for a company that ties my hands to be creative or wants me to go down a list of "proper" resolutions. I expect myself and my techs to be creative and I want them to think with freedom, not restriction. If I couldn't find a job that allowed me to do this, I'd work for myself again.

We try to hire well-rounded technicians. They have to have had their hands on a lot of technology, informally or formally, and they need the ability to infer solutions from lots of disparate and sometimes unconnected clues. Typically people who come from corporate environments that had strict rules on IT services (e.g. filling out forms to get a network patch cable) have a tougher time coming on board with us because they've been training to be less helpful than we need.

What's also very key -- and indeed this will get you far in helpdesk if that's where you want to go -- is the ability to empathize with users and make them feel like equals. Techs with amazing technical skills and lousy social skills are a dime-a-dozen and they're worth about as much, too, in my opinion. Users won't tolerate assholes any longer. Fortunately, neither will IT companies.

My _feeling_ is that our type of helpdesk is unusual. I can't say this for certain, but I can tell you that the majority find it is easier and cheaper to go the route of scripts and shorter calls with half-resolutions, work-arounds, or escalations that someone else will have to worry about. I feel there's a sea-change in the industry though. Users are smarter and they demand more and quicker fixes. My opinion is if you don't tie the technicians hands, they can get things done. That's how we try to live.

Now, there is a lot of stress in this environment. First call could be a problem caused by too many pop-up blockers in IE. The next call could be a frozen PIX (VPN/Firewall). And the next call could be a project to reset passwords for a 20 user company. We really don't know what's going to happen on any call. Some folks have not liked that.

I've always had sort of a sixth sense about computer problems, via both inductive and deductive reasoning, and I've got a pretty strong set of skills when it comes to Microsoft Office programs.

Your ability to reason can get you very far.

Although I'm more of a Mac user than a Windows user

I see Mac as an emerging technology in this environment. The reality is that it's a Windows World, with all the warts and whatnot.

Salary ... I definitely could not stand to take a pay cut, however -- in fact, my hope would be that this would be a pay boost, so I'm trying to get a sense of average pay in Chicago for this position.

I really couldn't tell you much about this. I only have a sense about what we pay. Typically a Tier-1 helpdesk that does actual Tier-1 work is the lesser paid position than, say, someone who is bestowed the real title of "engineer." I also can't speak to what a legal secretary is paid in Chicago. Sorry.

Entry requirements ... My college degree is not in computer work -- it's in (believe it or not) theater.

Bah. Show me someone who works the computer most hours of his day and who has accolades from people other than family for being a good and patient tech and I don't care if you left school in the third grade. Now other people...

I don't think you're going to find work looking in the paper or on Craigslist. You'll find it through demonstrating your abilities and through networking. That's my opinion. I know I always find work and I wouldn't qualify in the slightest for most jobs in the paper. (I don't have a Bachelor's Degree. I do have a lowly MCP cert.)

Job satisfaction ... How long do people last in this field, and do they enjoy themselves while in it? Or are we talking air-traffic-controller style burnout?

Like most things, it depends on your attitude and the environment. I really like our environment. We don't get on you if you are on the phone for an hour trying to help out someone with a work-stoppage issue and no one is available to go on-site. Other places? That could be grounds for dismissal. My best advice is to write down your ideal work environment and don't settle for less. Easier said than done, I know. :-/

Part of the reason I think I'm well-suited for this is I kind of like walking people through a problem and getting them back on their feet ... I liked being the "if you need help, ask this guy" informal-help-desk kinda guy at most of my jobs.

Ultimately to be successful on helpdesk, you need a head full of stuff, the ability to craft a solution from disparate clue, and a whole lot of people skills.

So, if you really have that kind of patience, you'll do very well on a helpdesk. You have some experience to rely on and the ability to infer comes with time.

Feel free to respond here with questions. :-)

Cheers,

Mike...
posted by tcv at 8:09 PM on June 17, 2007

Even at the senior levels, helpdesk positions will tend to be junior to the administrators of the systems that they're supporting. If you find being a legal secretary at 40 or 50 unattractive I'd be surprised that you wouldn't find helpdesk unattractive at 40 or 50 too.
posted by mendel at 8:39 PM on June 17, 2007

I work as an IT helpdesk tech for a private university here in the US. I've also done the helpdesk thing for about 5 years in the south-east and Texas.

Advice I offer:

Start reading up on the latest technology. Back when I broke in to this industry, I had a desire to know *everything* I could about the latest technology. I read tech websites, magazines, you name it. These things are way more prevalent now than they were in 2002, so this should be easy to do.


Meet other IT professionals. I strongly recommend making friends or getting to know professionals in this field. Like everything else, people on the outside don't see the whole picture. Knowing someone on the inside can help you better paint that picture of what you would be doing, provided you go this route.

Be ready to have your patience tested. Growing up, I was always "that kid" who could come by and fix your machine for you and answer questions. Patience wasn't required, because I dictated the pace. In this field, you most likely will not be able to do so, and will have your patience tried regularly, doubly so if you answer a phone rather than visit desks. This is the number one thing I see people burn out on in this field.

Be prepared to think outside of the box. You'll see a lot of odd stuff in this field. You've said that you like fixing things, so perhaps this won't be a stretch for you.


Take the 70-270 Windows Cert (or current equivalent) In the world of computing, this is (mostly) Mr. Gates' world, we just work in it. I know that there are Linux shops, and Mac shops, but the 70-270 should be the Windows XP Certified Desktop Tech certification. Taking this and passing does 2 things:
- helps learn the core of XP (which I don't see most places giving up for Vista any time soon)
- gets you on track for an MCP.

Doing entry level helpdesk is not a job that makes people wealthy. I can't speak for Chicago, but when I started, I was making 11 dollars an hour with no certs. You might be able to make 40k after a couple of years. If you like a more freewheeling, laid back work experience, look at working for an educational institution, or non profit.

Overall, it is what you make of it. Feel free to E-mail me if you have any questions.
posted by richter_x at 9:29 PM on June 17, 2007