How would one sharpen their tech support skills?
I work in tech support for a company that makes software for very large companies. We don’t deal with end-users much, we deal with the on-site administrators of our products. Just FYI. For my job, the number one most important skill to have and to convince the interviewer that you have is the ability to learn new software quickly and thoroughly. Clients are constantly finding out new ways to use and break our product that we never dreamed possible. In terms of specific software packages, we usually note what those are in the job posting. I’ve seen people be successful getting and keeping the job after only reading the introductory materials to those software packages’ doc suites. If you note in the cover letter that you have familiarity with the software, and then are honest and educated about your experience with it in the interview, it’s successful here. Certifications are useless here and everywhere else I’ve worked. Initiative is far more important.
I’ve been doing tech support for years, and it’s all about the ability to learn fast. You may know everything there is to know about BSD, but you don’t know ANYTHING about the company’s product you are going to support. Convince them you are a fast learner and you are patient and you are in. yeah, what specialK said.
Troubleshooting and deductive reasoning are the most important support skills. Most failed support incidents would be successfully resolved if the support person were capable of thinking in a straight line, applying deduction and not subject to belief in mysterious and incomprehensible technological forces. The worst support people I know — and I know some bad ones — struggle with the process of elimination. The best excel at it. Everything else is merely a matter of knowing the correct facts about the technology at hand. That’s just book learnin’.
I did tech support for some big firms in NYC and was appalled at the lack of search skills among some of the older, “wiser” techs who didn’t grow up on the web. In my case, I got experience working in the IT group of my college, and learned a lot from my co-workers and students in the IT program. What I found to be just as important as basic troubleshooting skills & techie knowledge is knowing where & how to find solutions to problems you haven’t run into before. Even the best tech support guy doesn’t know every single issue, every error message of every supported program, etc, but they will know how to find answers, even if it’s as simple as googling an error message. This probably sounds obvious to the MeFi crowd, but to some people (even IT supervisors–especially IT supervisors) this is considered “resourceful.” You should know to go to support.microsoft.com (or whatever the Apple equivalent is), vendor websites & support forums, read FAQs, etc. If it’s at a big company, they may h
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