We calculated that 8% of Help Desk Engineers are proficient in Troubleshoot, Help-Desk Support, and Technical Support. They’re also known for soft skills such as Customer-service skills, Listening skills, and Speaking skills. Joseph is a global best practice trainer and consultant with over 14 years corporate experience. His specialties are IT Service Management, Business Process Reengineering, Cyber Resilience and Project Management. Service and help desks are essential to successful IT service management. The right tools and the adoption of AI-powered insights can boost your ITSM team capabilities.

For an introductory course, start with IBM’s Introduction to Technical Support. Plus, if you enjoy the course, you’ll already be on your way to completing a Professional Certificate in the field. Moving up levels typically requires more experience and possible certifications specified by your employer or even advanced education such as a master’s degree. Holding certifications or a master’s degree can often help you advance more quickly. Service desk analyst openings are expected to increase by 6 percent in this decade, a rate on par with the national average 1.

Help desk engineer skills and personality traits

An IT help desk assists all users in troubleshooting a number of IT problems and issues. An IT helpdesk engineer can also earn a good salary and IT help desk jobs are always in demand. For entry-level service desk work, you’ll need a mix of technical know-how, along with the softer skills of emotional intelligence and people skills. Some may require a college degree, while others provide on-the-job training.

Technical Support Engineer job description

Interpreting raw data and turning it into usable feedback and applications is a vital part of any company, and why organizations are now hiring data scientists. If you have a sharp, analytical mind with a propensity for numbers and an interest in programming, this specialization may be the right fit for you. After you decide which certification is right for you, head on over to the CompTIA Store to select a training product or bundle to help you study. Bundles always include a free retake voucher just in case you need a second chance. To succeed in their role, a help desk technician must be able to work with others toward shared goals, even if they work remotely.

In this article, we’ll go over what a service desk analyst does, the skills you’ll need in the role, and ways to get started. One of the perks of starting your IT career at the help desk is your exposure to the many pathways technology can help desk engineer take you in your career. Software development is one of those pathways – and while having the hardware expertise may not be a prerequisite, knowing more is always better than not knowing enough. Here’s how you can leverage your experience at the help desk as your transition to software development.

IT support focuses on providing technical assistance for complex product issues. Someone in a help desk support role, on the other hand, is likely to help users resolve more straightforward matters, such as a forgotten password. They may escalate complicated technical problems like faulty products to IT support. Help desk technicians are specialized customer service representatives. They use their technical knowledge of hardware and software to troubleshoot users’ problems.

1. A service desk analyst is an IT professional who serves as the first point of contact between an end user and the company, working in a service desk or help desk environment.
2. To be a successful help desk technician, you must have business awareness.
3. Giving such assistance means that it’s all about solving problems from the moment they call the customer service line until the caller’s issues are resolved.
4. When IT pros choose to be patient with themselves as well as with others, they are better able to quickly get to the bottom of issues and find solutions.

This practice can help you discover in-demand skills employers are currently interested in. You can also join relevant communities and forums to connect with other professionals in your industry. Drawing from both the e-CF and the SFIA 7, here are common examples of service desk tasks based on the employee’s career level. Though these indicate levels within a traditional tiered framework, these competencies are applicable to most service desk approaches.

A great way to get into the data scene is by harnessing your technician skills inside the data center. Data center technicians provide an array of technical support to an organization’s data center by ensuring the servers are running consistently and smoothly. While a job at the help desk is a great way to launch a tech career, it’s usually a stepping stone to something bigger and better.

Skills for

Beyond technical proficiency, they must also have excellent interpersonal skills to interact with customers. IT help desk jobs typically involved troubleshooting general IT problems. They allow businesses to track and identify issues and resolve underlying problems. IT help desk software is also used in order to streamline the ticketing process. This means customers are given automated ticketing to ensure their query is directed to the right help desk support engineer.

In the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program, I learned skills to assist customers with end-to-end support, ranging from identifying problems to troubleshooting and debugging. For experience, completing an internship, as part of a degree, or an entry-level IT role in the field can help you build important knowledge that employers value. Having a strong knowledge of hardware and software and troubleshooting was never really par for the course when it comes to managing and analyzing data.

Like in any field, there teams of IT pros will work together on projects. For those to go smoothly, someone needs to take charge and oversee the project. If you have excellent communication skills and a natural ability to lead, CompTIA Project+ could be a natural progression for you. This open-source operating system is quietly running nearly all supercomputers and cloud servers that power our daily lives.