Desktop Support Interview Thursday

I know this has been a topic in many threads before but most of those threads got very few usful answers in them.

What are some of the questions I may get asked?
In the initial phone interview with the recruiter she asked how comfortable I would be about being asked break/fix questions. What are some break/fix questions others have been asked or asked of others in interviews.
Most of my experience has been in straight hardware repair/upgrades, cleaning out viruses, finding out what is causing slowdowns in HD performance (most cases just required a defrag or something as simple as that) and basic slowdowns in PC performance. Mostly really basic things.
Any help would be appreciated.

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Essendon

Got get it tomorrow!

N2IT

Weed

Good luck man! You will get a gig soon enough.

earweed

Thanks for all the well wishes.
I'm officially with onforce now so that's kind of a gig. It's basically what I'm doing now on m,y own but I have a go between and they get a cut but maybe I'll get more work.
My "job" with Syntechs is officially done and I can't get accounts payable on the phone or to return calls or emails. It appears that they are just flat out cheating me out of my next to last check. My last check is another question as I SHOULD get it in December but the website says, for some unknown reason, that I'm not getting it until January. I've contacted a lawyer but since it's not a big enough check I've been advised that I'm basically stuck. I can try (across state lines..lol) small claims court and if I want to spend the multiple hours doing paperwork I can try to file a claim with one of the many agencies that shuffled me back and forth last week telling me it would be better handled by another agency. It's not a lot of money but I did the work and THEY got paid for my work, also 2 of the repair jobs cost me several hours of driving and the price of the gas.
Basically by them having me set myself up as abusiness instead of working as a private individual I opened myself up to this. Most businesses have insurance or something to cover themselves for not getting paid by deadbeats (and that includes another business) I had insurance until last month but it wouldn't have covered this anyway. As a private individual you have a lot more rights and avenues to get stuff like this straightened out.
It just pisses me off.

Essendon

Damn man earweed, how bizarre...run like the wind. That's a terrible company to work for. I really hope you nail the second interview.

earweed

I think with their system of requiring you to give 30 day notice and making you liable for paying an out of area tech if you don't make your in area calls the last month that they have something set up to automatically keep your last check. I got one in area call the whole last month, on day 29, and I did the service call.
I'm done with them and hopefully will only ever hear from them again in the form of a check.

ehnde

Do you have a degree earweed? I thought you were going to WGU, maybe I'm not remembering correctly. It's both strange and disturbing to me that you have 4 CompTIA certs & a microsoft cert and had to go through so many interviews without success.

I asked my advisor point blank today if I'd be able to find a job around here in May (graduation). And he looked me square in the eyes and said yes and made it seem as if new graduates pretty much get hired right off the bat.

We'll see!

At least you're seeing some success with onforce. Even though you haven't seen anything on craigslist, instead of looking for jobs on there can you post an edited (for privacy) resume there too? Oh and do you use dice.com? I've heard good things about that site.

earweed

I've gotten more from careerbuilder and monster than from Dice. I'm near Birmingham, AL and there are a few universities and colleges and junior colleges here and every one of them has an IT Dept. so I've got plenty of competition. I did a PC Rollout locally not long ago and there were7 of us on the team and we were all in college studying IT at different places.
I'll have my degree by February and I'm hoping to have a regular IT job before then. So many jobs here are contract to hire (actually all I've seen so far for helpdesk/desktop support) and a lot are handled by temp agencies. I'm signed up with every temp agency in the area and every recruiting co. that'll talk to me. So far the majority of my interviews have come from out of area recruiters through monster or careerbuilder, I've had a few through going straight to companies websites but with working a fulltime job and school and a family that is a job in itself to research all the area companies . I've interviewed with a couple outsourcing companies also. My interviewing skills are getting better and I'm working on them still.
Getting that degree wont just automatically get you a job. You're still goingto have to do some leg work.

edzy

earweed, would you mind listing the long list of company websites you frequent? thanks.

earweed

The actual company websites that I go to are local so they wouldn't help you.
Some of the most helpful saerch agents/ job sites are indeed.com, dice.com, careerbuilder, and monster

earweed

Finally got an IT job. It's sort of IT. I'm gonna be a hardware tech at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Got it through a recruiter cold calling me after seeing my resume on Monster. It's a 3 month contract gig and hopefully leads into something permanent.
Having to reschedule my 70-647 exam as I don't want to ask for time off so soon. Nearest Saturday testing place is 6 hours away so not sure when I'll be able to take it.

Essendon

Congratulations earweed! This gig will hopefully lead to bigger and better things.

N2IT

earweed wrote: »

Finally got an IT job. It's sort of IT. I'm gonna be a hardware tech at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Got it through a recruiter cold calling me after seeing my resume on Monster. It's a 3 month contract gig and hopefully leads into something permanent.
Having to reschedule my 70-647 exam as I don't want to ask for time off so soon. Nearest Saturday testing place is 6 hours away so not sure when I'll be able to take it.

Weed awesome brother!

I am glad you found a solid gig. Keep us posted! That cert can wait, this is why you do all the certs!

steve13ad

Good job man! I know this has been a trying couple of months!

But you gotta keep looking because the the 3 months will go by quick!

veritas_libertas

Excellent!

Soooooooooo, do you get to fix any in Space issues that may come up?

Dakinggamer87

earweed wrote: »

Finally got an IT job. It's sort of IT. I'm gonna be a hardware tech at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Got it through a recruiter cold calling me after seeing my resume on Monster. It's a 3 month contract gig and hopefully leads into something permanent.
Having to reschedule my 70-647 exam as I don't want to ask for time off so soon. Nearest Saturday testing place is 6 hours away so not sure when I'll be able to take it.

Congrats on new job!!

earweed

Thanks for all the congrats!
After almost 3 weeks I like it so far. It's level 1, literally and figuratively (by the OSI model)
All we do is rack servers and switches and label cables (cat 6, twinax, and fiber) and plug and run cables. Bunch of great guys I work with and I'm getting a chance to network with some really bright people. Our head network engineer has a PHD and 2 CCIEs.
Have seen more Cisco gear than I've ever seen and that a lot of you may never see plus a lot of cool SANs. This Data center is huge and all the walking is helping me to reach my weight loss goals but is bad on my old, wore out, knees.

vCole

earweed wrote: »

Thanks for all the congrats!
After almost 3 weeks I like it so far. It's level 1, literally and figuratively (by the OSI model)
All we do is rack servers and switches and label cables (cat 6, twinax, and fiber) and plug and run cables. Bunch of great guys I work with and I'm getting a chance to network with some really bright people. Our head network engineer has a PHD and 2 CCIEs.
Have seen more Cisco gear than I've ever seen and that a lot of you may never see plus a lot of cool SANs. This Data center is huge and all the walking is helping me to reach my weight loss goals but is bad on my old, wore out, knees.

Glad to hear it's going well and you're enjoying - boo to your aching knees though! Congrats again

erpadmin

earweed wrote: »

Our head network engineer has a PHD and 2 CCIEs.

Do what you can to be that guy's best friend (within reason, of course...).

He's a solid reference for your next gigs.

earweed

Two of the PMs took our crew out to dinner last week...we had reached a milestone on the current project 2 weeks early...nice mexican place.
This week CSC is having a big crawfish boil. CSC (Computer Science Corporation) is the company in charge of building the datacenter. Our team is just contracted through a recruiting agency (all they do is get part of our checks)....
Crawfish boil will be a way to get in with the server guys.. Don't get to see them much as they're never around us unless we're working on an adjacent rack to what they're configuring.