Interview tomorrow for Help Desk Analyst

jjasso21

Hello everyone! I have an interview for a Help Desk Analyst position tomorrow. It is located in Chicago. The position is a 6-month contract-to-hire. The Help Desk Analyst position will be 75% over the phone and 25% interacting with face-to-face.Other than researching the company and its culture, is there any way I can best prepare for the interview?

I am coming from working in the hospitality field with 8 years of experience. In which I would interact regularly with the guests. I felt like I worked in this field long enough and would like to leave already.

Any suggestions? Chicago in general seems to have a lot of competition and this job would be located only about 20 min from my house. It is much better than the 2 hour commute to and from work every day.

ODNation

This blog post sums it up: Get Hired.

elderkai

That was the most useful blog post I've read in a long time. Bookmarked.

jjasso21

Definitely, some great advice in there. Thanks for the link!

pumbaa_g

For Helpdesk support your background will be a perfect match as both are customer facing roles and in my experience people from Hospitality sector do much better in Helpdesk's then techies. The primary reason is most techies get frustrated with people who are not technical and that never ends well. Apart from that Helpdesk guys need to be jack of all trades however, it never hurts to have specific certifications like A+/Windows 7/Vista etc.
Nowdays, in most Helpdesks the recruiters look for MCITP/MCTS/CCNA but I think its overkill for a Helpdesk position and leads to frustration in the candidates after a year or so. Ability to work long hours & extend/willing to work shifts will be default questions asked. Apart from these questions, one more aspect that is important for the interviewer is to size up the long term goals and see if they align with the company/role. Helpdesk is the entry level for other significant roles/responsibilities and if you show interests in lets say for example a technical upgrade path the company may pay more attention to you and even pay for the certs (if you are lucky). When this happens as the recruiter will look at you not as a prospective Helpdesk analyst but maybe a future Sys Admin. Lastly if you want to be in this game for the long run get ITIL V3 Foundation Certified, this is a must for any Service Desk.
Best of luck!

Cleverclogs

That blog post was brilliant. I actually printed it out to use as an encouragement for my interviews. Thanks for that.

FloOz

ODNation wrote: »

This blog post sums it up: Get Hired.

thank you so much for posting this! it is so helpful!

jamesp1983

Did you have it yet? How'd it go?

jjasso21

Yes, I had just came back from the interview. It is actually closer than I though to my house. It is literally 10 minutes away. It is a food manufacturing plant but has 3 different buildings. Every department has its own section and it is very nice inside. The funny thing is I have passed the place many times and had no idea what it was.

The interview went really well and myself and the IT Operations Manager seemed to be in sync and got along well. It is a centralized location for 11 other properties as well so we will being doing support for them. Also they are in the middle of getting all new equipment and migrating from XP to Windows 7, so good stuff! It seems like there will be some project work going on. It sounds like a good place to grow and I am excited for it.

The position is 9am to 6pm with an hour for lunch. Mon-Fri but maybe an overnight or 2 in the beginning of the month as it rotates. On a side note, she seems impressed with my education and the fact I was going after certs on my own lol.

I hope to hear from them by next week. They had another candidate after me scheduled but here is hoping for the best.

cyberguypr

Sounds like a great opportunity to break into IT. Best of luck.