Finding small businesses

Socom

Hey does anyone have any methods or pointers on how to find small businesses for It jobs?

I'm looking for places where I can always learn new things and pick up more responsibility.

Thanks,
Socom

Bokeh

You can check volunteer match.com and see if there are any IT jobs in your area. Volunteering is a good way to get your feet wet and gain experience.

JoJoCal19

Look for small manufacturing places and warehouses. I started out in IT as a JOAT for a small envelope manufacturer. Plenty of learning opportunity in that type of position.

--chris--

Socom wrote: »

Hey does anyone have any methods or pointers on how to find small businesses for It jobs?

I'm looking for places where I can always learn new things and pick up more responsibility.

Thanks,
Socom

Find a company that supports small businesses, some call them IT service providers. These company's are usually small and are more likely to give you a shot.

Armymanis1

Non-profit organizations are also great but you have to work for free. Make sure you have enough gas money to get there

The_Pariah

If you can get your foot into the door a MSP, managed service provider, for SMBs would be a good path. Increasingly few truly small businesses (<25 users) have on staff IT anymore unless their IT infrastructure is mission critical or IT support is part of their core business. Even many 25-50 user networks have outsourced their IT support. While you will have to do a lot more work at an MSP than being a direct employee for a small business that isn't an MSP itself you will get a lot more experience faster that way than you would otherwise, which may advance your career skills a bit faster.

techfiend

MSP's unfortunately removed a lot of entry level opportunities. I interviewed at an MSP a few days ago and seemed like everyone was exhausted 5 hours into their shift. Burn out seems to be common in that role as well. However for someone hiring would 1 year of MSP experience be less, equal or greater than 2 years internal help desk a larger company?

You could try map services like mapquest to find SMB websites to check their career section or email them.

The_Pariah

techfiend wrote: »

MSP's unfortunately removed a lot of entry level opportunities. I interviewed at an MSP a few days ago and seemed like everyone was exhausted 5 hours into their shift. Burn out seems to be common in that role as well. However for someone hiring would 1 year of MSP experience be less, equal or greater than 2 years internal help desk a larger company?

You could try map services like mapquest to find SMB websites to check their career section or email them.

Hence, why I said if you can get your foot into the door with an MSP. I agree that the shift most SMBs have made away from having permanent IT staff even on a part time basis has removed some truly entry level positions that people need to get into IT support, but those trying to get in entry level may be better off trying to get a Tier 1 helpdesk job in a larger organization as many smaller organizations IT staff are often expected to be able to handle a wider range of skills.

Burnout can be a bigger issue in MSPs as many of them in a desire to make their services more affordable than full time IT staff for their clients try to get their employees to cover as many tickets as reasonable per day. This is a double edged sword. It allows you to get a lot of first hand experience in resolving issues, but depending upon the MSP you may largely be dealing with break-fix where you may not get much experience with larger projects that will advance your career. I would say whereas experience that MSP experience you can learn a lot more than you might in an internal help desk job in a larger company. Will you learn more though that depends upon the position. In a smaller MSP there may only effectively be two tiers of employees where the junior employees do tier 1/2 and the senior employees will deal with tier 2/3. In a small MSP you may get to do a lot of projects and quickly gain experience in a lot of areas whereas an internal helpdesk you may not. For an internal helpdesk you usually aren't go to be doing projects regularly. Depending upon your skill level a small MSP you might get more experience opportunities. Honestly, any title with the word helpdesk in it doesn't tend to be a high level position. Sometimes MSPs will label their entry level employees as jr systems admins even if they largely handle tier 1 type tasks that are helpdesk by another name, but in a larger organization past tier 1 support usually probably will be a jr admin or maybe simply network/systems admin where their direct supervisor is a supervisor and then there is a Manager or director above that. Titles aren't always clear cut upon what the responsibilities of the position are.

--chris--

techfiend wrote: »

MSP's unfortunately removed a lot of entry level opportunities. I interviewed at an MSP a few days ago and seemed like everyone was exhausted 5 hours into their shift. Burn out seems to be common in that role as well. However for someone hiring would 1 year of MSP experience be less, equal or greater than 2 years internal help desk a larger company?

You could try map services like mapquest to find SMB websites to check their career section or email them.

A lot of people say burn out is a problem with MSPs, but TBH honest I see burn out at both MSPs and at corporate clients. Its an IT thing, not an MSP thing. I remember my internship, the IT manager at the place I worked at was very burned out supporting the 250+ employees by himself. The place I work at now is an MSP and we have an owner that tries to keep burnout down.