Help Desk Interview

eten

Hello,

I have a help desk interview scheduled on Thursday but I don't have any relevant experience in that field, only call center and telemarketing experience. They are well aware of that, however, I do want to prepare myself and get a feel what type of support calls/tickets I would be expecting as they would be conducting a technical interview on me. Job description says I would be mostly supporting win XP and NT, outlook, office, and adobe acrobat. What were the most common tickets or calls you received in those areas?

Thanks.

Devilsbane

Most help desks are almost entirely based on customer service. Your job will mostly be about collecting the information, and sending it to the correct place, while reassuring that customer that you are going to take care of it for them.

Your call center and telemarketing experience will likely be better than any technical experience that you could have. You might be able to solve a few problems from time to time, but a lot of times you will just forward them on anyway. Your employer probably doesn't want you spending 25 minutes on the phone to solve an issue when somebody could go to their desk and fix the problem in 2 minutes.

That depends heavily on the enviornment and the type of users that you are supporting, but this is my experience with help desk.

eten

Thanks for the answer.

The interview I'm attending will actually be a 3rd party recruiter. They explicitly stated in the email that they would be conducting a complete technical evaluation on MS operating systems, office, and hardware. This is the part which worries me a bit.

Devilsbane

I interviewed with 2 recruiting agencies. The first place had me take an examination, which was similar to a Microsoft test. Except that it was 10 years out of date and asked me repeated questions on stop error codes and what they meant. I scored like 60% which was well above the average. At the end of our talk she told me that "It shouldn't be too hard to find something, especially with the good score you got on your test."

3 months later, they had only lined up 1 interview for me. I got contacted from a second recruiter who found my resume on monster and I went into meet him. No test, and not much that I recall about my abilities, other than narrowing which type of jobs he should be looking for.

So from both my experiences, the testing they do is fairly limited. Maybe your recruiter is bluffing and just trying to scare you? Or maybe they do have a full examination planned out already, in which case studying probably won't do much good due to the vast subject matter and the short timeframe.

Brush up on some stuff if you can, but I think the biggest asset you have is your customer service experiences over the phone, so be ready to talk that up.

Paul Boz

Just read over the A+ outline and familiarize yourself with common terms.

skyline

My helpdesk interviews were pretty simple. They would give you an example of a call and have you troubleshoot. While explaining the steps involved to the end user. Documenting in your notes what steps you took and if it resolved the issue or not.

So for example. User calls in and his/her outlook crashes when they open it.

Generally they just want to know that you can think on your feet. That you can handle stress and won't freak out if/when you get in a situation that you are dealing with an irate user. Helpdesk can be an easy job but it can also be very stressful and is not for everyone.

Pragmatic_nate

I work a help desk now. If it weren't for the customer service aspect i'd love it. I had to take a "technical" exam before hire as well. If you know how to turn your computer on and send an email you should be fine.

Devilsbane

Pragmatic_nate wrote: »

I work a help desk now. If it weren't for the customer service aspect i'd love it. I had to take a "technical" exam before hire as well. If you know how to turn your computer on and send an email you should be fine.

Welcome to Techexams!

eten

Pragmatic_nate wrote: »

I work a help desk now. If it weren't for the customer service aspect i'd love it. I had to take a "technical" exam before hire as well. If you know how to turn your computer on and send an email you should be fine.

Taken the interview last Thursday. I wish it was that simple as turning on the computer . Had four technical evaluations during my interview, whole interview took around 5 hours:

First was around 50 MC on Operating System, Office, Networks, AD, and Lotus notes.

Second was Case Scenario troubleshooting where you have to type out a paragraph for diagnose procedure

Third was listening test, where they would play some tape and you had to answer MC questions based on the call.

Fourth was typing test.

phantasm

eten wrote: »

Taken the interview last Thursday. I wish it was that simple as turning on the computer . Had four technical evaluations during my interview, whole interview took around 5 hours:

First was around 50 MC on Operating System, Office, Networks, AD, and Lotus notes.

Second was Case Scenario troubleshooting where you have to type out a paragraph for diagnose procedure

Third was listening test, where they would play some tape and you had to answer MC questions based on the call.

Fourth was typing test.

That doesn't sound like an interview to me. I would've walked out the damn door. Did you have any face time with any management individuals or just take tests?

To me it sounds like all you did was some pre-screening work.

eten

This was actually a hiring agency for a fortune 500 company. Yes, I spoke with the hiring manager there for around 30 mins. All the other time was spent on the technical evaluation and waiting. And add another 20 mins for watching a Workplace Safety video. They were quite pleased with my scores actually, despite I guessed on all the MCs on Lotus Notes since I never used it.

parttimetechie

In my experience help desk jobs are way under tehcnical. I work at one for a company now and if you looked at the reqs for the job posted on Monster and then worked the actual job, its ridiculous. I don't think im used an ounce of my tech knowledge from my A+ or Net+ exams, and all I really do is troubleshoot proprietary applications. Its not that hard of a job at all, and it pays pretty well. I just miss the break fix kind of work I used to do. If I could find a way to make my current money doing break fix, I would.

phantasm

eten wrote: »

This was actually a hiring agency for a fortune 500 company. Yes, I spoke with the hiring manager there for around 30 mins. All the other time was spent on the technical evaluation and waiting. And add another 20 mins for watching a Workplace Safety video. They were quite pleased with my scores actually, despite I guessed on all the MCs on Lotus Notes since I never used it.

Cool!! Best of luck to you!!

Devilsbane

eten wrote: »

This was actually a hiring agency for a fortune 500 company. Yes, I spoke with the hiring manager there for around 30 mins. All the other time was spent on the technical evaluation and waiting. And add another 20 mins for watching a Workplace Safety video. They were quite pleased with my scores actually, despite I guessed on all the MCs on Lotus Notes since I never used it.

Depending on the hiring agency, it can sometimes take longer. One of them that I worked with had me fill out a lot of the paperwork that would be needed if I actually got hired ahead of time. Such as a w4. Another place had me come in a second time after a job had been offered to do that stuff.

I never had any workplace safety videos or anything. Sounds like it went pretty well and I wish you luck at finding something.