How to get a NONE Phone Support Job in IT?

I am breaking into the IT field and I need an entry level IT job but most of those that come up are "sit on the phone and help people for 8 hours a day". I can't do this job because I will go crazy sitting in a box on the phone all week. But, I need experience and wanted to know what kind of jobs I should be looking for that are more hands on like Comcast or assembling computers? I get my resume looked at and get phone calls but I get shot down because I don't have "paid work experience in IT", even though I have a 2 year degree in IT, my A+ cert and 10 years of personal experience building, and troubleshooting computers and windows OS XP, vista and 7.

Thoughts?

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

darkerz

If you don't like to talk to end users for 8 hours a work day, I have bad news on your prospects for IT...

SlayerX

No I love talking to people in person. I don't like sitting on the phone talking to them for 8 hours a day. Dislike sitting in a box

kurosaki00

you dislike sitting in a box but you want to work on IT?
Im confused...
Most of IT jobs you will be in a box most of the time doing your thing, and talking to customers/clients/tickets

PD75

Do the job you hate for a year and get some experience. Most of us probably started off that way. Experience is the key. I did 6 months unpaid work. Why? Because I wanted to get experience and it paid off in the end.

About7Narwhal

kurosaki00 wrote: »

you dislike sitting in a box but you want to work on IT?
Im confused...

It's those pesky ITT Tech commercials, I tell ya! Showing people all happy and working directly with the servers.... When in reality, they are behind a partition with an RDP or good ole telnet session going. Sad, sad days.

MiikeB

The best I can come up with is try getting a job at Geeksquad or something similar.

90% of your job will be installing AV software and removing bloatware from peoples new pc purchases but once in a blue moon you might get to fix something and list that on your resume.

Its not like when you list "Reinstalled Windows 7" or "Solved issues relating to shared printer drive compatibility" anyone asks exactly how many times you did that.

Michael2

You mean you were offered a phone support job and you didn't take it? Pardon me, but that's just bananas. What do you want to do, get paid to install Windows 7 on people's computers all day? A two-year degree in IT, the A+ cert, and ten years of building computers is not enough to get a non-phone support job.

jamesleecoleman

It's not fun sitting down all day in front of a computer and talking to customers. I'm doing it right now. Actually on the phone with a customer right now doing test pair on his circuit.

Now I'm done. So anyways, you basically just have to go with it. You'll get a lot of rude people but you'll also get a lot of cool people from different background. You'll learn so fast how professional people can become unprofessional when talking to you because of whatever doesn't work. In this case, I work at an ISP. You'll improve your troubleshooting skills and learn new ones.

Sometimes I get things from an Engineer. Last major thing was to terminate Cat 6 cables and test them. Second thing is to check the blacklists.
Sometimes I get lucky and I get to watch the troubleshooting process of troubleshooting out "T1 routers", which are 1600 or 1700 series Cisco routers. Sometimes I get to play in the Adtran 900 series. I actually found a way to help better troubleshoot the voice connections because no one knew that the Adtrans had the web interface.

Soon, I'll get access to help me troubleshoot the T1's on the Cisco routers and maybe voice problems on the Adtran 600/900 series.

These will be things that I'll be able to put on my resume. I've been waiting a long long time to be able to put something about Cisco, other than the certs on my resume.

You don't exactly what you'll be doing in a support role because things change. One thing that really sucks is that you don't always leave when you're supposed to. I was supposed to work six hours but now I'm at 7 and 1/3 hours for today. I'm tired and I have a headache.

I'm going home here pretty soon to flirt with a Brazilian woman

So it is in fact worth it to do the support. You will learn so much.

By the way, these are some of the things that I've done so far:

Troubleshoot outlook emailing issues
Test pairs on dsl dry loop circuits
Test modems
Test Cisco routers
Review configs on Cisco routers
Troubleshoot T1 lines
Password resets
Account modification
Remote troubleshooting
Port resets on the VNIDS
Put in tickets with our software, at/t, lecmi
Followup on tickets
Billing
DSL orders

and some other things that I can't think of.
I did all of this under a year.

Jasiono

about7narwhal wrote: »

it's those pesky itt tech commercials, i tell ya! Showing people all happy and working directly with the servers.... When in reality, they are behind a partition with an rdp or good ole telnet session going. Sad, sad days.

quoted for the truth! By the way, it's NON, not NONE

Jasiono

OP. I highly suggest you don't work for a company doing things like Comcast installers do unless you like going into dirty houses and crawling in tight spaces, unless you don't mind it.

tpatt100

I don't feel like being an intern, can I just run for Senate?

About7Narwhal

tpatt100 wrote: »

I don't feel like being an intern, can I just run for Senate?

Apparently any shmuck can...

cruwl

The positions you're looking for do exist, we hired some one like you with no work experience to the help desk that isn't a sit and take phone calls all day job.

Look for them, They will be desktop support or help desk ect, look for the ones that say must pick be able to lift 50+ pounds ect. and apply for all the ones you find regardless of exp wanted or required.

edzyyy

i wish i could find one of those.

SlayerX

Cruwl I'm in the Coeur d'alene ID area, is your company near by or hiring? If not thanks for the advice I will apply for jobs that have those requirements

Meditator

I was actually in the same boat before-didn't want to sit on the phone for 8 hours a day. However, I already had my A+ then CCNA- got my 1st job as a temp Deployment tech, then Help Desk technician (installing AV, PC/printers, replacing power supply,etc..- rarely on the phone though) I was there for less than a year before going to the NOC w/ another company.

Read the job description, that will give you some idea of what you should apply for. If it says: call center, taking calls, troubleshoot through phone then most likely you will be in the box for 8 or more hours. If it says; replacing....., fixing or installing.... then you'll be out walking a little bit.

nicktornetta

consider going into sales engineering. you make a high base salary plus commission, you dont have to take support calls and if you are on an outside sales team youll talk to people in person.

sales engineering is a great position that i think people take for granted. you get the pay benefits of being on a sales team, but you arent someone that can easily be churned out (like actual sales people), plus you get to keep your technical skills up.

SE jobs are available in software, hardware, telecom.. you name it. if you need to put in some work, start on a tech support team and move into an SE job at another company. i say another company, because most companies dont give salary jumps for internal transfers. for example, if you are making 50K as tech support, maybe you get a 55-60K base as an SE if you transfer internally. however if you come from the outside, you might start at 70-80K.

NetworkVeteran

consider going into sales engineering. you make a high base salary plus commission, you dont have to take support calls and if you are on an outside sales team youll talk to people in person.

An average SE in an average year probably makes about $10k more than an average technical support engineer. SEs often have a lower base salary, but earn commission, and have more upside if they're great with people and/or put in extra hours.

It's true you don't take support calls, but customers still call you about their technical issues. Guess who is most impacted if a problem is not solved and they decide to switch to a competitor? That's one reason an SE's technical skills tend to stay sharp.

SEs do get to move around more, and don't sit behind a desk so much.

Mike-Mike

OP sounds like he wants a desktop support job

Service Desk jobs suck, but I'm a better IT pro for having done a year in it. You learn a ton, you learn to think quickly, you learn to multi-task...

At my current job, you can really tell the people who have no helpdesk experience

nicktornetta

I agree, my foundation was in technical support as well. Entry level tech support is a good way to break into the technology industry for sure.. but when you start muting the phone to swear at people for not knowing how to power cycle a modem, kicking your computer tower because someone cant find the Start menu, or slam your phone down to hang up on someone HARD because of how awesome they are (if you slam hang up some avaya phones hard enough, the ethernet cable pops out the back. dont ask how i know this).. thats when you take the next step and move to network/sales/design engineering ;p

NetworkVeteran

nicktornetta wrote: »

when you start muting the phone to swear at people for not knowing how to power cycle a modem, kicking your computer tower because someone cant find the Start menu.. thats when you take the next step and move to network/sales/design engineering ;p

Alternatively, that's when you work to improve yourself, and move upto level-2 or level-3 technical support.

There are folks at the Cisco, Juniper, and other TACs doing interesting day-to-day work.

Cleverclogs

In my last job I was on the phone constantly. The actual amount of technical fixes I did was minimal. However, in my new job the phone support is only a very small part of it. Very often I take a phone call, then I'm off upstairs to actually go fix it. This can be anything from complete hardware failure to re-patching or re-configuration of the software. I'm also setting up VCs and leading presentations (Gives my soft skills a real chance to shine). The difference between the old job and the new one is like night and day.