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Getting Out of Tech Support?
An anonymous reader asks: "For the last year or so I've been working in 1st line tech support at a small call centre that's part of a much larger outsourcing company and to be honest it's sucking the life out of me, I want change but I don't know what direction to take in order to get out and I really need some advice from others who have made the jump. I suppose what I'd like to know is what kind of jobs one should be looking for coming from technical support with decent knowledge of UNIX, networking, scripting and 'light coding'. Is there any hope for me or will I have to go back to school in order to even have employers look at my resume?"
I'm in my mid-twenties and I've taken a number of college-level courses, a couple of those being computer engineering courses, some math and a few others that I found interesting, in the process I also managed to procure a fairly large amount of debt in the form of student loans, nothing I can't handle but I don't really want more debt although going back to get a degree is one possibility. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do except that I want to do something a bit more "real", to actually fix problems instead of just talking to customer after customer and then submitting tickets for someone else to fix the problem. From what I've understood from older acquaintances moving from tech support to other positions was actually a good way to go back when a lot of companies handled their own tech support, but for me there isn't much of a career path at this company as we only handle 1st line support, 2nd line and all above is done by the client companies themselves.
I'd really like to get more into sysadmin type work, or at least something where you spend more time solving problems and managing systems than you do arguing with irrate customers over how they have to call customer service for billing questions as technical support can't handle those problems."
I'd really like to get more into sysadmin type work, or at least something where you spend more time solving problems and managing systems than you do arguing with irrate customers over how they have to call customer service for billing questions as technical support can't handle those problems."
Why not just check out the job market? Look at ads for interesting jobs and their requirements. I would definitely recommend you to write a few applications, even if you don't feel 100% certain that you want the job(s). Job ads can sometimes be quite misleading and going to interviews will be good experience, a chance to find out more precisely what the companies are looking for and what you can expect from them. Many companies also use psychometric tests for evaluating applicants and although alot of those are crap (especially if over interpreted (which they often are, unfortunately)) it could be interesting to be able to take such a test.
During the autumn, I was looking for a job, attended a few interviews and got the chance to take some psychometric tests. Even though I'm a bit sceptical to those tests, it was an experience and I think I got a clearer view of where I want to go and what I want to do jobwise.
I have to agree. I'm 43 and have only just recently come to that conclusion (I'm a slow learner). All the self-paced and occasional classes will not help. Take it from one with experience.
I've been, and still am working in an "operations" job for the past 15 years or so and have gotten really tired of it. I believe the decision I made to go to school, obtain a degree and change my focus is one of the best moves I've ever made. Now, all I need to do is decide what my end focus will be...
Although I do have one benefit that you might not have. The company I now work for has tuition assistance, which will mitigate the cost somewhat.
Best of luck whatever you choose.
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
Actually, my first resume filters would be spelling errors, bad formatting, and disorganized presentation.
Self awareness - try it!
In my view, if you don't care enough to check for problems with your resume, you will probably be just as careless with the systems or processes you're responsible for. There are always exceptions of course, but if I'm trying to cull the resume stack, it's not un unreasonable approach.
Self awareness - try it!
Ha, okay.
I dropped out of college after a year and a half to take a temp job doing network support. That start eventually took me through a number of software quality assurance and IT jobs to the point that I ended up as the Director of IT for a mid-size company. I'm now back in QA, serving as a lead for a team of four testers that specialize in network deployments.
Mind you, I'm not making six figures, so I may be a failure depending on one's measure of success, but I make a very comfortable living considering my regional location (central PA). And seeing as I have no college debt, my sub-six figure salary serves me well.
So please, spare me the "you must finish college" crap. For what I wanted to know and the jobs I wanted to do, tinkering in my spare time and on work time was sufficient to learn what I needed to progress. I have been thrust into many situations that were beyond me, but learning rapidly under that pressure, and being paid to do it, has been more beneficial to me than paying money to an institution to prove my reliability.
Bear in mind we are specifically talking about going from a tech support job to something else somewhat related but not on the front lines. I obviously would not suggest avoiding college if one wanted to build bridges or do surgery. In IT and software, however, there are more than enough opportunities to learn and grow on the fly that make college unnecessary.
I was working on some home projects a few years ago while searching for a job. While setting up OpenBSD on my machine, I noticed that the mirror was an ISP in my city. Of course I checked out their website, saw job openings and applied. I told them this story during the interview, which lead to discussions to the projects I was doing on my own time, which lead to a job offer.
I wound up turning the position down for another one, ironically a few blocks away from them, for a company that uses them as an internet provider! So now I had a contact in the ISP, and they had one inside my fairly large company (me). Win-win situation.