Get Help Desk Training and get a Job!

For help desk training this page will focus on the non technical skills involved in help desk work. Training and developing these will give you a serious advantage over your competition. For information on relevant technical training and certification check the links at the end of this article.

Effective help desk training should prepare you for all aspects of the role. A common misconception people have of entry level help desk work is that the most important skill sets they need to acquire are technical.

While technical knowledge is important to do the job, help desk work is all about taking the calls and assigning them up to the appropriate team for resolution – feeding back to users in the most efficient and timely manner, keeping them informed of progress and ensuring all call logs/documentation are up to date.

What you learn from technical certification differs greatly from how it is in the real world. Every office environment has its little quirks and the mixtures of different technologies make for some interesting learning curves.

Help Desk Training – All about productivity

Some of the most relevant skills for this type of role are customer focus (particularly telephone manner), time management, organisational skills (staying on top of the call queue and not forgetting things that result in nasty complaints), and most importantly the ability to prioritise.

When prioritising your work you have got to think about productivity, the impact of downtime and how to minimise downtime. Here’s an example of an interview question to test prioritisation skills (I got asked this one once):

1. Several employees in the marketing department cannot connect to the network.
2. The CEO cannot print to her local printer – she wants it fixed NOW!

OK - The big boss is very important (and quite scary), however a large portion of the marketing department can’t connect to the network and are completely dead in the water, money is flowing down the drain every second they can’t do their work.

It’s all down to you who gets seen first – your next decision is critical!

Here’s what I’d do (I got this question wrong in the interview by the way – below is the ‘correct’ answer)

A: Get the CEO to send her print jobs to her PA while you go and investigate the network problem in marketing.

OK so you might get a talking to, but when the smoke has blown over you will have done the right thing – minimising downtime and saving the company money!

Developing Time and Project management Skills

Developing skills like prioritisation is not covered in technical certification. It is however an essential part of your help desk training, it’s something most people learn the hard way (myself included). The easiest way to brush up on these skills is to do some basic project management and time management courses.

Time management, project management (think of every logged help desk call as a project), communication and customer focus are the skills that when developed will make you really stand out from your competition when applying for helpdesk roles.

Your resume will sparkle and you’ll ace interview questions like the one above – and believe me these are the kind of questions you’ll get asked a lot!

Combine quality help desk training with relevant entry level technical certification and you’ll get a great help desk job very quickly.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in learning more about non technical help desk training have a look at value pack #5 from Trainingcenter.com, for some very reasonable prices you can start enhancing your skill sets by training the necessary skills to become a help desk superstar.

These courses are very popular with companies who sign their existing employees up to enhance their productivity, however there’s no stopping anyone who wants to proactively develop these skills to drastically improve their employability.

Help desk training sets you apart from your competition, even the more technically qualified. At entry level your focus is on being part of a well oiled machine interfacing between users and the IT department. Get your foot in the door first and the more in depth technical training will follow.