Even during something as simple as a shift handover, help desk technicians collaborate with their coworkers. Collaboration helps them deliver value and shouldn’t be underestimated. Also, keep in mind that some people must wait a long time to talk with you. Understandably, they may have a short temper when they finally reach you. To calm them down and earn their trust and confidence, you’ll need to adopt a patient attitude. Despite its drawbacks, serving at the help desk can be incredibly rewarding if the right qualities and skills are developed.

• You might start to pick up some data center experience with virtualization technologies and various storage technologies.
• Help desk technicians are specialized types of customer service representatives who use their knowledge of hardware and software to help troubleshoot problems that arise.
• 51.1% of help desk engineers graduate with a bachelor’s degree, and 6.3% of people in this position earn a master’s degree.
• Level one is an entry-level position and involves troubleshooting simple questions and escalating anything more advanced to level two in the case of a service desk analyst.
• To calm them down and earn their trust and confidence, you’ll need to adopt a patient attitude.

Comparatively, help desk engineers have the highest earning potential in the finance industry, with an average salary of $67,498. Help desk technicians who pay sharp attention to detail also tend to work well with second- and third-level help desk engineer teams and set a good value perception for end users. Empathy is hands down more important than technical help desk skills. Empathetic help desk technicians can better connect with their end users and make them feel understood.

Related Job Descriptions

Continue reading to find out what skills a help desk engineer needs to be successful in the workplace. We sorted the top help desk engineer skills based on the percentage of help desk engineer resumes they appeared on. Getting started as a help desk professional can be as easy as earning a foundational IT certification.

To effectively analyze an end user’s issue, you must ask targeted questions about what they are experiencing. This means making your current end user’s problem appear to be your number one priority, even if you don’t view it as a pressing issue. To get here, you have to have had lots of hands on experience, both with successful deployments and failed deployments.

Middle of the Ladder:  Systems Administrator/Network Administrator

To be a successful help desk technician, you must have business awareness. This means immediately asking an end user where they are calling from and about their role within the company. Knowing this gives the help desk technician a gauge for how critical the end user’s problem is. More than anyone else, a help desk technician has the power to give employees across all departments a positive view of IT since they are usually the first IT pro that an employee encounters. Because of this, it’s critical that help desk technicians possess specific qualities.

Technical assistance is the non-financial assistance provided by local or international specialists. The purpose of technical assistance is to maximize the project’s implementation and quality of the final product. Technical assistance consists of sharing information, the transmission of working knowledge, and other transfer of technical data which would aid the administration, management team and help build the project. The technical assistance focuses on particular needs identified by the beneficiary country and is delivered in the form of missions. Also, being confident in both technical and non-technical skills will increase your ability to work well under pressure.

Typical career paths to becoming a service desk analyst

Customer service is the process of offering assistance to all the current and potential customers — answering questions, fixing problems, and providing excellent service. The main goal of customer service is to build a strong relationship with the customers so that they keep coming back for more business. An operating system acts as a link between the user and the hardware components. Below we’ve compiled a list of the most critical help desk engineer skills. We ranked the top skills for help desk engineers based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 7.7% of help desk engineer resumes contained troubleshoot as a skill.

I firmly believe you could be a Senior Systems Engineer up until you are ready to retire and be completely happy. You have to have a complete understanding of every aspect of a company’s infrastructure (networking, storage, virtualization, OS, security) to architect or design a solution that suits their needs. This is not an easy process but you can get there with years of experience and lots of knowledge. The Information Technology field is one of the most rewarding and challenging career fields in the world today.

You are a traffic cop, keeping things moving and fixing small things where you can. Levels four and five tend to be management levels, and level six will be the head of a department. These levels vary according to the size and function of a company, but having levels means it’s possible to advance in your career and move to other companies, with a clear distinction of the level you’re working at.