Minimum certs for Help Desk

ElGato127

What would you consider to be the minimum number of certs to land a help desk position? Budget for testing is a little tight, so I want to make the first few count as much as possible.

I have A+ and a fair amount of experience building and supporting a ton of different devices.

For a "next best thing", would it be enough for now to start studying as if I'm about to take N+, CCNA, Linux+, etc., and at least know what I'm talking about at an interview?

Thanks

danny069

A+ should be enough for helpdesk (phone support or deskside) If you want to get into networking, you can take the CCENT (instead of the N+), ICND2 route (which will give you the CCNA). The reason being it will make you more marketable than the N+.

networker050184

Minimum would be zero. Plenty people in all areas of IT that have no certifications.

UncleB

ITIL Foundation is an interviewer getter - it covers best practice in IT in all areas and is pretty universally used as a standard for all Service Desk staff to achieve.

Other than that it depends on the technology that you are going to support - CompTIA A+ is fine of you do hands on repair / upgrades, Network + or an entry level Cisco exam if there is a lot of networking involved and some technical ones such as Win 8.1 MCP or Microsoft Office Specialist in Excel can be good hooks to get them to interview you, but these are best targetted at what is most used in the areas you want to work in.

Iain

E Double U

Our helpdesk guys have CompTIA and Microsoft stuff.

TWX

A pulse? Mastery of the local dominant language?

It really depends on what the helpdesk provides support for. If the helpdesk is a glorified ticket-taker, or is providing very product-specific end-user support (think ISP as an example) then there's no need for any certification. Strengths would be good language skills and an ability to be upbeat on the phone regardless of the demeanor of the caller.

If the helpdesk provides internal-organization support then it might be beneficial to have certs, but being able to demonstrate basic application knowledge to walk users through the kinds of problems that users have is probably more important. You'll be helping people with application-level problems in such a role much more than systems or infrastructure problems. Being experienced with the applications that the organization uses would be the most important, followed closely with the ability to discuss technical subject in the terminology that end-users use, and the ability to document in a workorder system well.

If the helpdesk provides support for higher level functions then certifications might actually start to matter. When I call my WAN provider because a site is down I expect them to know what I'm talking about about to be able to start to troubleshoot without escalating to another individual. They still might have to escalate or have to dispatch a field technician, but I don't want to have to re-explain the issue to anyone when I'm calling in to what should be a premium service.

v1ral

No certs at all, just a willingness to learn. If you do want to standout from the crowd and make yourself more marketable to hiring managers get the A+.

kohr-ah

A+ would be more than enough if you are looking to get something.
Want to go a little further? Get an operating system certification.

Beyond that I wouldn't go any further.

UncleB

To put this in a different light, when I advertise a first line support position I will recieve hundreds of applications so if you don't have experience or certs then why would I want to interview you when there inevitably will be dozens who look better on paper. I have limited time so have to use some broad categorisations to help this process work.

The certs only really work as an interview getter (well actually knowing the subject material is a bonus too) and wanted you to realise that hiring managers need to find a way to reduce the pool of candidates, and by ticking the box of being certified in industry standard subjects gets you onto that shortlist.

For a helpdesk / support role, the next step of often a phone interview to check you can speak good English (or language you will work in) and have no major language issues (stutter, speak too quetly/loudly etc) and get a flavour of the personality to help filter down to the actual face to face interviews.

Most companies I know will have an agency run a technical test for support positions that filter out the obvious liars and that leaves the face to face interview to impress the hiring manager that you will be a cultural fit. This is where you are most likely to do something to impress the interviewer by being yourself, but reasearch the company AND the interviewer if you can get their name in advance - playing to their vanity and knowing the company are strong plus factors.

thanks
Iain

advanex1

Depends on where you want to apply - for any DoD related Help Desk you need to have Security+ and a computing environments certification (Windows 7 type stuff) at a minimum.