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MSSoftie wrote: » The certs honestly aren't as important as the experience. That may be a bit of heresy on a site like this one but its true. The certs are great as a way to prove certain skills and often they will get you past the HR people that don't really know what they mean but are told to look for them. They can also help you land the interviews with IT Managers that want to see them but certs without experience will not help you. In fact, when I hire people I consider it a red flag when someone has certs well beyond their work experience. What you need to do is work. You will make moves in smaller increments. If tier one where you are is just a "call taker and ticket maker" work up to the person that the tickets get escalated too. If you work tickets, work your way up to the next level of escalation. Be open to changing companies to make the moves you want to make. I have found that changing companies has been a much faster route to more money and higher positions. I believe that you need come to a time that you need to move-up in a company or move out. The time period increases as the level increases. Personally, I wouldn't stay in a level 1 position much more than a year before looking for a level 2 position. It took me a year to move from a $12 hour to a $20 hour. Two years after that I was salary but at over $30 an hour and a couple of years later I moved up again and continue to move up. It can be done but most of those increases were with new companies. Companies can be funny about promoting from within. They all talk about how they do it but in practice, in my experience it is much more likely for them to bring in someone new. That is especially true in larger companies. HR departments have deep seated beliefs that you should only advance so fast and it may have nothing to do with your level of skill. Again, they never admit this.
phonic wrote: » There is no 'official' definition of a Tier 1 Helpdesk position, nor are any two necessary alike. It is simply a term used to define a group of people at a company. Some are very basic and require limited technical expertise - which sounds like what you are doing for the most part. In some cases, it might mostly be scripted responses, which requires even less skills. Other companies might require much more advanced experience and knowledge, which should result in a higher pay range. For example, I used to manage a department that had two tiers of support. However, even the Tier 1 group needed to have an intermediate understanding of a wide array of technical competencies (networking, Linux, VoIP, security, telephony, etc.). The Tier 2 group was generally made up of the people who had a good amount of experience supporting our products and services and who excelled in Tier 1. But the amount of skills required to be a 'good' Tier 1 at our company was equivalent to what many companies would consider Tier 2 or possibly even Tier 3. Many of the people from that group went on to (or were stolen for...) other positions in the company like development, QA, system administration, etc. So when comparing pay stubs, it's more important to look at job responsibilities and requirements versus titles. This goes with pretty much all positions.
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