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Member Contribution By:Rezwan Ashraf
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IT Support Technician (Level 1)
Provide simple trouble shooting support to employees, mainly installing drivers(display link, Targus Dock Drivers), setting up printers, networks, also provide basic hardware support for new docking system.
My job was simple and to the point. I carried around a USB stick with the necessary drivers and helped the employees who needed support.
Very little job security as it was part of a contract for just one project(Office Relocation).
A typical day would be busy at the start of the day, but work would decrease after a while as majority of the laptops would be fine and didn’t need lot of support.
I would usually start at 7am( before the employees arrived) and finish around 5:30pm
Simple problems like installing display drivers, USB 3 drivers for the new docking stations. Hardware replacement, checking connections( more frequent than one would think).
would ask my team members first, or ask my supervising engineer.
I didn’t have to make any major decisions. The problems were basic and to the point.
The toughest situation I have faced was the first day of work when the whole thing was new to me as it was my first IT job, because I am still in school. I wasn’t provided any training so I had no idea what I was supposed to do. When the first employee asked for my support I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, but I got around and the problems were very basic. So the toughest thing for me was not knowing what to do at the beginning.
I had to interact face to face with the company executives. It was excellent client handling or communication training.
I was very busy at the start of the day and it slowed down till lunch, and it was not busy at all after lunch.So I read books, or watched videos.
I basically provided support to all the employees in different functional areas.
I was very flexible, as this was a very basic IT role, I could roam around, and wait for people in my designated floor to come to me with any trouble.
I was part of a team, but we did our tasks individually.
I liked the simplicity of the job and the pay, but I didn’t like the fact that I was bored most of the day doing nothing.
It was very exciting at first as it was my first real hands on experience in IT field.I learned a lot from my supervisors, who were mainly Level 3 Support techs and Exec Support techs.
Good communication skills was a must, as a few of the other students got fired for not being able to communicate with the executive employees.of course basic computer knowledge and troubleshooting skills are a must.
The skills needed for this kind of job was simple computer knowledge, how to connect hardware, install drivers, setting up networks, printers, so a lot of them I learned by myself by just using my computer everyday.
.Well, I am still in school doing an IT Diploma in NZ, and the company came to school to interview students to hire for this project. So I didn’t have to be a Graduate but school definitely helped scoring this job and gain this real life experience.
I would recommend going to school to get the certificate, primarily because recruiters need to see this. MBA would be too much I guess, Bachelors would be useful, I am doing a Diploma, which is helping me, but Technical knowledge is the most required skill backed up by any certificate.
I worked for the biggest Company in NZ, because only they could afford to hire IT students to install drivers. It didn’t change my lifestyle too much, but I did learn a lot and have a sense of pride when I tell people I worked for Fonterra as an IT Tech.
No trouble like that.
Not being challenged.
I would like to change my role and make it bit more challenging in order to learn some more. I would have liked to work at the Service Desk where the Level 3 engineers were doing the Help Desk work to learn of course.
I wouldn’t have left, my contract expired.
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I’m technically no longer in the IT field and I’m working on changing careers again back into the IT field. I’ve worked as a city employee in IT and also a startup company with no certifications. I’m currently studying for the A+ certification. This site is a little different from a lot of the other tech sources that I am using which is awesome. Learned about it on KevTech IT Support’s youtube and discord page.
1. What precisely do you do? What are the duties/functions/responsibilities of your job? My previews job was as Desktop Support for a News channel and sports company. I worked deploying laptop and desktop computers. Printer installation and troubleshooting. Decommissioning computers and taking care of the inventory. I participated in upgrading software. I resolved tickets from the Service Now database system. Requested computer devices from clients. I deployed Mac computers and troubleshoot them. I map network drives. I Remoted into users’ computers. Installed and upgraded monitors. Troubleshoot Microsoft Outlook Windows and Mac Operating Systems. Traveled to different locations to accomplish clients’ requirements. Notify users about the status of their refresh. Participated in weekly meetings to improve our customer’s skills.
2. What is your job like? Busy and demanding. A lot of responsibility.
3. How much job security do you have in this position? A lot I had to deal with a lot of confidential information from different departments.
4.What is a typical day like? I never know what the day may bring on Monday. Busy from the start until the end of the day.
5. What kind of hours do you normally work? 8:30 am to 5:30.
6. Do you have to put in much overtime or work on weekends? Sometimes was required to accomplish projects.
7. Do you ever take work home with you? Yes, I did.
8. What kinds of problems do you deal with? Bit locker issues. Users could not connect to their shared drives. Internet issues. Account locked. Incompatibility software. Permissions. Viruses and malware.
9. What do you do if you can’t solve a problem on your own? I google it. I ask for help from my coworkers. Contact a special team according to the department.
10. What kinds of decisions do you make? Sometimes I was supposed to deploy new computers and the users had to give me back their old pc, because of some software or hardware incompatibility. I have to decide if the user should take both computers until their issue was resolved.
11. Describe some of the toughest situations you’ve faced in this job. Data transfer taking so long.
12. To what extent do you interact with customers/clients? By phone, email, or chat or face to face.
13. How does your time use vary? Are there busy and slow times or is the work activity fairly constant? Sometimes can vary. As I had mentioned above Mondays were very busy days.
14. Which other departments, functional units, or levels of the hierarchy do you regularly interact with? I had the opportunity to work with the news department, Sales department, Sports department, Publishing department, Media department, Design department, and Theatrical department.
15. How much flexibility do you have in determining how you perform your job?
99%
16. Is your work primarily individual or predominately in groups or teams? teams Very friendly environment and excellent team. To much work for a few employees.
18. Do you find your job exciting or boring? Exciting Why? Because it was full of new technology to explore and learn. 19. What particular skills or talents are most essential to be effective in your job? Customer services and have a good attitude to perform the job. Knows Service Now.
20. What particular skills or talents are most essential to be effective in your job? The company offered training and self-study.
21. What are the educational, requirements for this job? In my case, I had a Bachelor’s degreed and some certifications. 22. Is graduate school recommended? An MBA? Some other graduate degrees or certifications? Yes, they did.
23. How has your job affected your lifestyle? There was a time that I did not have rest and it was affecting my immune system and concentration.
24. To what extent does this job present a challenge in terms of juggling work and family life?
-Mostly around 90%
25. What are the major frustrations of this job? The benefits for contractors were very low.
26. If you could change anything about your job, what would it be? The administration.
27. Is there a great deal of turnover in this job? No
28. How many people do you supervise?
-None
29. If you ever left your job, what would most likely drive you away? Learn new technology and to get a job with better benefits.
1. What precisely do you do? What are the duties/functions/responsibilities of your job?
-Working as an “IT Operations Engineer”. We get user-created tickets regarding VM issues, VCenter related issues, VRA issues, Network related issues, Server related issues, 0365 related issues, even UC related issues, etc etc. Apart from that we have to work on backups, antivirus patching. We also working as a NOC engineer where we need to drive the Incident management process in case any site goes down. We need to open a bridge involve technical people, management people, provide our inputs, and drive the P1 process until it gets resolved.
2. What is your job like?
-As above refer to the answer of question 1
3. How much job security do you have in this position?
-I am daily afraid as I am exposed to almost all technology. I am very new to IT and expectations is more. Everyday I login will fear. I do not know what I should prepare exactly step by step.
4. What is a typical day like?
-Checking change request and pausing the nodes, working on ServiceNow tickets, we work on VMs and not on exact hardware machine.
5. What kind of hours do you normally work?
-24/7, 7 days a week. Morning, Afternoon, and Night shifts.
6. Do you have to put in much overtime or work on weekends?
-Yes sometimes
7. Do you ever take work home with you?
-In this COVID environment, I am working from home.
8. What kinds of problems do you deal with?
-I am very new to Servers, OS environment, Networking, UC, 0365. I do not know how to start to learn about these technologies. I am taking help from my colleagues but many times I am alone in the shift then I get very stressed to the point that I think I might get a heart attack.
9. What do you do if you can’t solve a problem on your own?
-Fwd the ticket to the Level 3 team, My Job role is of Level 2 team but actually I do not know abt Level 1 stuff at this point.
-But now TL and Manager asked me to do troubleshooting and resolve issues on my own. In case it is not in my scope or that skill is not in Level 2 then update the ticket with my Level 1 findings then only I can assign it to Level 3, else they will not accept the ticket.
10. What kinds of decisions do you make?
-We initial P1 incident handling process, contact users, Level 3 technical (Sys admin, Network team) and contact Managers.
11. Describe some of the toughest situations you’ve faced in this job.
-Every day is a tough day for me.
12. To what extent do you interact with customers/clients?
-Almost many times via Teams, Skype, Call regarding the issue.
13. How does your time use vary? Are there busy and slow times or is the work activity fairly constant?
-Work activity is fairly constant.
14. Which other departments, functional units, or levels of the hierarchy do you regularly interact with?
-Service desk, Server admin, Network team, Labs and Cloud team, UC team, Managers
15. How much flexibility do you have in determining how you perform your job?
-around 50%
16. Is your work primarily individual or predominately in groups or teams?
-Mostly individual
17. What do you like and not like about working in this job?
-Stress and so much of expectations. We are level 2 team after GSD (Service Desk) and then from Level 3 they are experts in their domain. They want us to work on VMware, Network, Servers, OS environment, UC, application support, and also own P1 process of the incident management….so much exposed.
18. Do you find your job exciting or boring? Why?
-Boring at this point as I am unaware of most of the things in IT.
19. What particular skills or talents are most essential to be effective in your job?
-OS troubleshooting, VMware (vCenter and VRA), Networking, Server/System admin
20. How did you learn these skills? (Links, Sites, etc)
-They gave access to Plural sites, CBTNuggests but learning from it is bearing and do not understand what they talk, also so much of vast info that I am unable to start. I do not know from where to start and not getting interested in the way they teach. Just watch video…
21. What are the educational, requirements for this job?
-None, but they expect to be graduate at least with at least 1 year of IT experience of System/Server/VMware/Network
22. Is graduate school recommended? An MBA? Some other graduate degree or certifications?
-MCSA, CCNA, VMware, 0365
23. How has your job affected your lifestyle?
-I am working in 24/7 environment and due to this I am unable to live a schedule life, I get Afternoon say for 2 days then I have to come to Night for 2 days and 1 day for Morning…WOFF is not fixed
24. To what extent does this job present a challenge in terms of juggling work and family life?
-Mostly around 90%
25. What are the major frustrations of this job?
-Everyone wants us to know everything
26. If you could change anything about your job, what would it be?
-The way TL and Manager only take new work without giving a proper KT of that work. I want to change this.
27. Is there a great deal of turnover in this job?
-Yes, many people left the job saying their profile is getting happered as manager expect us to know about everything
28. How many people do you supervise?
-None
29. If you ever left your job, what would most likely drive you away?
-Organized work and concentrate on one or two things at a time.
I used to work as a help desk technician few years back. Than i finished my school and again decided to come back to the field where i enjoyed most. Came to know about them through youtube, joined the course and just sharpen my knowledge again. Hoping for the best!!!!
I am currently retired , and I am taking this course so I can reenter the job world again and get a well paying job making good money in the IT world again.
Contribution by Member: Chukwudi Moses (Chudi)
1. I was a Copyright Officer & an IT Support Technician
2. Well, it was okay for the 5 to 6 years i was with my previous employer, but the challenges never stop coming. As an IT Support, i provided desktop support to all departments and units, from laptops, desktops, phones, performed hardware and software installations, updates, configuration with a lot of troubleshooting. I also implemented a bespoke Copyright system, supported it by providing 1st and 2nd line support.
3. Well, i must say, the job security was 100% because it was a federal government employment and once you are in, you will be still retire. But aside the security, the pay was nothing to write home about as i could balance both my family commitments with work.
4. Typical day was like hell, from dealing with different staff members to dealing with queries from external users and to carrying of computers/printers from a department to the IT unit lab for fixing…and all sort.
5. 9am to 6am
6. Overtime plus weekends
7. Of course, all the time
8. All sorts, from work related, to staff and personal related. From diagnosing, troubleshooting, installing, updating to
9. Thank God for google.com. Google is like the IT Bible or Quran. I don’t think there are no problems and solutions someone can’t find on Google.
10. IT related decisions.
11. One was when there was an issue to the mailing feature of the bespoke Copyright system. Automated notification emails stopped sending out.
12. Not a lot to external users, mainly staff members
13. Well i would say average. It gets busy and sometimes slow, especially when there is power outage.
14. All departments including the office of the Chief Executive
15. Well, not much but as long i delivery. Getting result and a positive is not to be compromised with. So whether flexible or not, as long as all that needs to be done are done, we it’s fine.
16. My previous manager always tells me, Chudi, i like getting my hands dirty on a job. We had a team of three IT staff that i managed, but i enjoy joining the fun with them in getting things done.
17. Would say I did face a lot of challenges that were beyond my scope of responsibility. Generally i love challenges, especially IT related. And i enjoy fixing and helping people fix things. One challenge i hated the most was power outage.
18. Exciting at first…normal like all new jobs, though I liked it to the last day i left. Had to get something better…family is growing. Get what i mean? lol
19. IT support skills, logic thinking or ways of solving any problem. And sometimes just common sense, attention to details
20. The zeal and motivation to learn and i used Google and the internet in general for this
21. BSc degree
22. Have only CompTIA A+, for now
23. A lot. I party less. Go to bed in good time and always brainstorming on how to fix issues at work. lol
24. Well, not spending with the family
25. Dealing with someone that thinks they know it all and the power outage
26. Inject some common senses to all staff members..lol. joking. Better pay, more tools to work and absolutely constant supply of power
27. No.
28. Three.
29. Career trap/lack of career development.