First technical interview this week.

Hi all!

I have my very first technical interview on Wednesday. I don't know that I am fully qualified for this job, but my recruiter set it up so I am trying to have faith in HER faith in me. It's for a call center- focus on customer service (which I have a ton of experience in.) with the technical part focused on POS, windows, and outlook.

What should I expect from a technical interview? Advice? Thoughts? Wisdom? ANYTHING THAT WILL HELP ME NOT FREAK OUT?

Thanks.

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N2IT

Outlook

Rules, Calendars, Connectivity, PST, Adding Mailboxes, repairing office (outlook)

Review those topics they should help you out if they ask you a question about Outlook. If Outlook is not connecting what should you do, well that would be restart it or take it off line and back one line or send receive. That's all I got.

scaredoftests

and questions about printers..and how do you deal with a unhappy customer...

paul78

Also - focus on how you would answer a question that you don't know the answer to... Whenever I have conducted technical interviews, I would base a chunk of any candidates qualifications on how they deal with solving a problem that they don't know the answer to...

markulous

Don't worry about not knowing the answer to everything technical. If you don't know then it's okay to say so. Focus more on answers to customer service as that's going to be more important in any job interview at this point. Entry level positions are just that and you won't be expected to know the answer to everything.

srabiee

Let us know how it goes. I'm sure your experiences will help a lot of other people on the forums in a similar situation.

bloodshotbetty

I figure if there is a question I don't know, I can emphasize that I am willing to find out the answer by consulting my resources- coworkers, supervisor, company resources, internet, etc. Meanwhile, emphasizing to the customer that although I don't know the answer, we will get the problem solved for them.

Mike-Mike

Tell them you hate it when people have accents, and you think that it's absurd that an end user can lock themselves out of their account.

just kidding, don't do any of that

good luck, and don't be afraid to tell them you would "Google it" if you didn't know it

Mike-Mike

bloodshotbetty wrote: »

I don't know that I am fully qualified for this job, but my recruiter set it up so I am trying to have faith in HER faith in me.

I dont know you, and I don't know your recruiter, but this line is a setup for failure.

That recruiter doesn't know you or give two craps about you. I'm sure there are some good recruiters out there, but the majority are just trying to get paid as fast as possible. They will hype you up for no reason. Only you know what you are ready for. Having faith in yourself will take you way further than worrying what a recruiter thinks.

N2IT

Mike-Mike wrote: »

I dont know you, and I don't know your recruiter, but this line is a setup for failure.

That recruiter doesn't know you or give two craps about you. I'm sure there are some good recruiters out there, but ALL are just trying to get paid as fast as possible. They will hype you up for no reason. Only you know what you are ready for. Having faith in yourself will take you way further than worrying what a recruiter thinks.

Let me fix that for you.

Shdwmage

I'm actually meeting with a recruiter and a direct hire manager with a staffing firm today. They are driving an hour down to see me on my lunch. I guess they want to really see where they can fit me? I'm not really certain what to say on it.

As to your dilemma, for a long time I felt that I wasn't good enough to be doing this. Everything always has come naturally to me and I've felt like a **** because of it. I've never felt good enough for any job that I've had and I always became an asset to the company because I worked harder than the rest to just prove it, but also because I was afraid for my job.

We bring in an external pen tester once a year to check out our security. He sat me down and had a really good conversation with me. He said that you know what you're doing, calm down and just relax. Having someone who probably makes in a month what I make in a year sit me down and tell me that was a real confidence booster. My work quality and effort have changed for the better, substantially. I'm not worried about if I can do the job or not. I worry more about how to do the job in the best way possible.

The change of reference has really been eye opening for me.

I hope my rambling helps and that I didn't hijack the thread.

kurosaki00

I would say know your basic protocols and technologies and a lot of customer service related questions.
What if a customer gets angry?
What if they dont like you and want to talk to someone else?
Stuff like that

VinnyCisco

How would you walk a user, over the phone, through troubleshooting whether everything is connected properly. Sounds simple right? Well, I am doing this over 15 years, and just now took a call where the user thought their computer was not working. Turned out the monitor cable was out and needed to be reseated. I get at least 3 of these a day. Other times when I go see the client, it is as simple as pushing the power button on a printer.

You will get these calls and you need to be good with walking a user through a troubleshoot process. Sometimes they will be very stubborn or frustrated from the beginning. You will need to know how to smooth them over to make the call go much better.

GoodBishop

I remember back when I was doing help desk, in the interview they asked me about dealing with angry or difficult customers.

bloodshotbetty

I can definitely handle the customer service side of things- years of retail as well as being an ex social worker. However, the technical stuff is super new to me. I haven't passed my 802 yet! Ahh. If anything, it will be a good introduction to what future IT interviews will be like.

echo_time_cat

Just wanted to add this to the great advice already here.

I've seen people start out at entry level positions, and they customer service skills did more for them than any technical skills.

You are bound to come across things that you don't know the answer to. If the company has their 'stuff' together somewhat, they should have an internal knowledge base or wiki of some sorts with setup/settings info, and common troubleshooting problems and solutions. Your ability to use the company resources and google what you don't know will take you far in that first role.

Also, most things like a POS system, Outlook and Windows will give you some kind of error code (most of the time), so be prepared to google them. It's not important you that you know all the error codes ahead of time, but that you research the solution, follow through with your findings, document what you do and test the solution.

If it's a technical interview, I imagine a lot of the time they would also be looking to see if you verify the basics.

*Are there any underlying connectivity issues. Can the customer pull up their homepage? Ping google? etc.(always fix this first)
*When did the reported issue start and were there any other changed made by the end user, or system wide, at that time?
*Is the reported issue affecting one user or multiple users?
*Has the affected user power cycled? ("Have you tried turning it off and on again?")

Good luck.