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The Stigma of a Tech Support Background
An anonymous reader writes "Since the last semester of college I've been working as a first line tech support agent. At first it was just a way to earn some extra money; then it became a way to scrape by until I could find myself a real job. By now (almost two years in), it's beginning to feel like a curse. The problem I'm having is that no matter how many jobs I apply for, and no matter how well-written my applications are, I can't seem to get further than the first interview. For some reason it seems a lot of employers will completely overlook my degree in computer engineering, the fact that I can show them several personal projects that I've worked on, and that I can show them that I clearly possess the skills they are looking for. I've had several employers tell me to my face, and in rejection letters, that my 'professional background' isn't what they're looking for even when they've clearly stated that they're looking for recent graduates. In fact, a few have even told me that they decided against hiring me simply because I've worked in tech support at a call center for the last two years. I'm wondering if others have experienced similar problems and if there are any good ways to get employers to realize that my experience from tech support is actually a good thing and not a sign of incompetence."
In fact, a few have even told me that they decided against hiring me simply because I've worked in tech support at a call center for the last two years.
Are you a good tech? If so, why haven't you been promoted? Or at least assigned to head tech or second level support?
No offense, but when I did the same thing as you I was in "Team Leader" training in 3 months. All call centers I have worked at (only 2) and most that I have heard of, have enough turn over that by 2 years, a "Computer Engineer" should be moving up the ranks.
I think part of the Peter Principle talks about how lower level or entry level jobs are usually done well by those that wouldn't do well in management or more difficult jobs. Also, perhaps you are not a good tech, but a great developer. This all might be working against you, to no real fault of your own.
Perhaps take a part time job as a developer... advertise that you are willing to work part-time for no benefits and that you know some modern languages; that you are willing to work the night shift doing testing; that you will work for $int_cheap_labor per hour - something to get your foot in the door and working wth professionals.
I do have a hard time believing that just becuase you work in tech support in a call center, you aren't getting jobs. There must be a little more to it. Try to advance in your current postion, or broaden your *professional work* experience (not personal projects).
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Maybe you need a dry run with an interview expert to evaluate/grade your performance.
Its very possible you are committing one or more "interview success killers" and don't even know it. It may have nothing to do with your resume.
In my experience, the best solution is to leave it out. If your experience is limited to JUST call-center work, list every responsibility you had while leaving out the fact that it was tech support. If you can dance around it well enough (And the company name doesn't give it away), you get all the benefits without any of the drawbacks. Short Version: Lie.
But clearly you have something better to say...
I think this is an excellent take on it. And maybe instead of just listing it as tech support you can elaborate on what you were doing and demonstrate your troubleshooting skills more so than just that you were following a list created by someone else,; that your experience has forced you to have a greater understanding of the underlying technology than your peers.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I started out working TS, too (I am currently a developer)...and companies offering most of the positions I was applying for understood that a couple years of experience in TS was a great boon because at the end of the day no matter how good you are as a developer, your software has to get used by people; people that get frustrated, people that have certain patterns of doing things that aren't the same as engineers - and a lot of engineers just don't understand that until they have to deal with those people day in and day out.
... i.e. Tech Support.
I am nearing the point in my career where I will have to start *hiring* coders, and one of the first things I am going to look for is a background in bridging the gap between "software systems" and "people"
If the positions you are applying to don't seem to get that then I can only offer 2 thoughts:
1. They don't understand software development that well, so you should probably not work for them.
2. *Explain* what I just said above in your interview.
I'll add to this. No doubt the people reading this who have worked/are working tech support will likely balk at what we are saying, but just like the original poster, they are on the other side of the bridge and are angry because they think they shouldn't be there.
Fact of the matter is, this guy settled. Imagine someone who went to school and got a masters in some sort of engineering/drafting for bridges, but instead started his first job drawing caricatures at at a carnival. Imagine a PhD is psychology who decided out of school to "Watch my neighbors son on weeknights". Think about the PhD in some sort of super brain/heart/whatever surgery who took a job as a school nurse right out of school.
Sure. MAYBE these people CAN do what they went to school for, but taking such jobs right out of the gate tells me and others that you are incapable.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
People have usually decided whether they're going to hire you after the first couple of minutes. They often don't really know the reason for rejecting other than "a feeling", but still feel the need to justify their decision.
Work on interview technique.
I agree. I wonder if he just meant that he wasn't promoted into management but he was now higher than 1st level. That question is a very important one.
The other thing I would add is try smaller companies. I don't know who he is interviewing with (Fortune 500s, 1000s, 5000, companies of 100+, etc) but he may get a better shot at a small company where he can demonstrate his skills or they may be willing to give him a 90 day trial period.
An entrepreneur who has had to push past obstacles and may be more willing to give you a shot. Somewhere you may be able to talk to someone other than a middle level HR guy you may be able to argue your case more.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Personally, I wouldn't hire you either - you have no experience.
"How can I get experience if no one will hire me?"
Well, you have an /excellent/ choice of career paths in computers, because you don't need a benevolent company to hire you in order to get experience. In fact, in my own hiring, it's the experience that happens /outside/ of a "job" that makes the most difference. If you really want to succeed, do something. If you are trying to be a programmer, write that project you've been wanting to do; don't wait. Once you have it written, that goes on your resume. I wrote a /HORRIBLE/ stupid graphing calculator for Windows CE and started selling it, and that is absolutely what got me hired as a coder. Don't have the werewithal to make a whole project? Contribute to existing open-source packages, and reap the same benefits.
Or maybe you're looking to become a network engineer instead of a programmer. Set up your own virtual cluster of machines running under KVM, make it do fun things, show off your ability to create a secure environment, and put it on your resume as experience. Even better, when they ask you about it, you can offer them a copy of the entire setup on a DVD, with all the virtual machines...
Either one of those scenarios would get you hired by me, regardless of the rest of your resume -- not only does it show definitively you can do what you want to do... far more important is the fact that it demonstrates you love doing this stuff; you love it enough to do it on your own. That is key.
You're lucky - you've got a field where the cost of doing it "in your garage" is absolutely minimal.
Call center experience /is/ good experience, in my personal opinion. I had early jobs at call centers. I still value that experience as a developer, because it helps me remember that people are idiots who will mess things up if you give them the slightest opportunity. This is critical to keep in mind when developing anything. But it's no substitute for actual experience in programming. I think you can sell your experience in call centers to someone who will hire you to do other things, but you'd best have some additional selling points, because while that experience has some value, it's not a hiring-value.
If you are getting interviews then the problem is not with the resume, but with the interview.
You may want to check with the school you went to if they have anyone that could help you.
Failing that, you may be able to find resources online with key points to remember on an interview.
Also, many companies do tend to think that anyone that is in tech support for 2 years is because they could not do better, so you may want to look for a small company to work for while you can add some other tittle to the resume.
Specially think of a small ISP, or one where they may let you do other projects in addition to tech support.
In general small companies will have you involved with much more than tech support, even if that is what you are hired for. Larger companies tend to be more specialized so if you get hired for position X, it is little harder to move.
Any small company will, but there may not be as much technology beyond support for you to do. With an ISP there is a higher chance of you getting non tech support tasks.. even on the smallest of ISPs.
If I had to guess, I would say that:
1) You smoke. People who work in tech support smoke.
2) Do you drink and / or drug? My experience with TS folks is that they tend to have a higher rate of both than the norm. Do you happen to fit any stereotypes of either of these? I have long hair for example - people assume I'm a pot smoking hippie.
3) You probably spoke negatively of your current employer. This is because TS sucks. However, this is a huge warning sign for employers.
4) You probably think you are above your current job, and it comes out in the interview process. People don't like people who are like this.
If I am totally off the mark, my apologies. If even one of these sound like you, then you may want to think about what you can do about it.
PS> Being a smoker isn't ever going to be the stated reason you didn't get a job. I don't think it can be, officially. Still, it's the same as showing up wearing too much cologne - people take their sense of smell seriously. Smokers generally don't smell good (too much smoke, overcompensating mint, etc) and it does hurt their odds of success. It's not something I would consider in an interview but I've watched it happen to smart people who should have been moving ahead.
This problem is not about technical qualifications. In fact, you see this sort of thing in food service, sports, journalism (real journalism, not blogs), photography, building construction... you name it.
You are pretty much screwed. You've been had cheap and people's perceptions are so, so hard to change.
Prospective employers only want you for what you have done and aren't interested in anything else.
I recommend that you omit your employment history from your job applications and resumes. Explain that your parent's financed your education and provided your food and housing. You never had to work.
We're not talking about too much time, here.
I do have a hard time believing that just becuase you work in tech support in a call center, you aren't getting jobs.
I've experienced a similar stigma working with Big Iron: "Oh, you're a mainframe programmer? Well, we don't do much of that anymore, most of our stuff is object-oriented..." Nevermind the fact that I've been doing C++ for more than a decade. I experienced a similar stigma when I got into embedded development. My degree says computer science, not IBM mainframes.
Some people just can't wrap their head around the fact that you aren't tech support. Personally, I would not put anything on my resume that wasn't career related. The fact that you have tech support on your resume probably makes them think that you think it has something to do with the position offered. They don't need to know you worked as a tech support - sure, you might have to put it on the application, but it should stay off the resume.
The next time it happens, you might want to end the conversation like this:
Them: Well, we're interested in hiring an engineer... Not so much tech support...
You: Have you ever worked in fast food? I thought so! I'm not interested in working for a burger flipper, either...
Believe it or not, I've said worse to an interviewer...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
It could also mean that the economy is shit and these were the only jobs they could find.
He took the job while stil working on his degree, not after. He's been unable to find a job in his field after receiving his degree.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Sure. MAYBE these people CAN do what they went to school for, but taking such jobs right out of the gate tells me and others that you are incapable.
The sad thing is that a lot of employers also hold this prejudice. Honest people and intelligent people aren't willing to sell themselves with fake resumes, nor can many people who get out of school with massive student loans afford to wait around for an ideal job offer when there are bills to be paid.
I've always found that people often blame the misfortunes of others on personal attributes, and in their hypocrisy they blame their own misfortunes on other people. It's shameful.
Actually I think every developer should do a year or two in end user technical support.
All too often there is a disconnect between those that design and code software and the end user.
If this person worked their way though school doing tech support than that is great.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
To be fair, though, why should it matter?
1. Most important of all, you can give the guy a test, you know? _If_ he spews the usual stuff that spells "idiot monkey who couldn't even understand that list right" -- like that rebooting solves most problems, and activating FSAA is a fix for graphics problems (hey, rendering glitches are called artefacts too, and FSAA solves rendering artefacts. Genuine piece of "advice" I've heard.) -- then, by all means, don't hire him. But _if_ he happens to know his stuff, why does it matter what job he had before?
Especially because...
2. In that race to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel to save costs, since at least the 90's I've seen less qualified people in all sorts of IT and programming jobs. Some places will not only hire a summmarily retrained burger flipper if he asks for less money, they'll _prefer_ one.
So, you know, wtf? They'd hire someone who worked at McDonalds and lied about having taken a "Java for dummies" course, but they won't even listen to someone who's worked in tech suppport? Something seems amiss there.
3. Don't get me wrong. Yes, probably 90% of the L1 tech support guys are just the cheapest monkeys who can use a phone and read a list. Badly. I'm not saying all are smart and competent, or anything equally silly. But I'm saying there is a variation in competence in any job, ya know? The trouble is the other 10% who just happened to need a job and nothing else was available. E.g., if said person was still in college, I don't see that awfully many other jobs who overlap well with that. You're not really going to take a game dev job and pull 80 hour weeks, for example, when you _also_ have to learn at the same time.
Heck, even as job descriptions go, it varies substantially between companies. You can't paint them all with the same brush. E.g., as ISP tech support goes, I've seen mine go recently from abysmal to guys who can actually solve simple problems without going through that canned list. I know, it's the first sign of the Apocalypse ;)
Even getting a promotion isn't necessarily a given, if all you have is two years. A _lot_ of support and generally IT jobs have been offshored in the last years, so in some places you'd be just happy to keep your job for two years. Because everything above you is also getting reduced faster than normal attrition. Plus, there's just plain old statistical flukes. I've worked (as a programmer) for a small company where the tech support guys just had no path to advance any higher, for example. The only job above L1 support were us the programmers, and as statistical flukes happen with small numbers of people, past a point no more programmers were hired, no more managers were needed either to promote some, and nobody quit for some 3 years at a point.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It could also mean that the economy is shit and these were the only jobs they could find. Preach it brother. Maybe if companies hired more developers with tech support backgrounds we would better designed products.
on what you were doing and demonstrate your troubleshooting skills
I don't how it is in the US, but here in Europe no law will force you to list every single jobs that you have worked on. In fact nobody expects you to. Generally you don't give out an exhaustive résumé, instead you put focus on highlight a couple of entries that you think relevant to the job you're applying for.
So a different approach would be to just remove the Tech Support from the begin of the résumé. Focus more on the academic achievement (Titles, Awards, Publications, etc.). Also on all the various opensource/personal project that you have developed or contributed (specially the ones now in production stage), trying to highlight the diversity of tools that you master.
Of course at some point of the interview the question will come what you have been doing all this time between graduation and the present.
The best is to only mention the job then and explain that you haven't considered your current job worthy of getting mentioned on a CV for that peculiar application (so they understand that you *do* indeed work, you just have something better and more interesting to pitch about you).
Maybe mention then too, that people tend to misrepresent what your job consist and tend to focus on it instead of your actual skill, thus you choose to not mention it in the curriculum. You can subsequently jump on the topic on what you think you've done actually cool that people would misrepresent : mention the tech understanding the out-of-the-box hacking/fixing, etc. so the employer gets the point that you were not a "follow the script" drool-drone.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That means that you're essentially the same as one of this-year's graduates, except that you'll have had 2 years to forget stuff and won't have been taught the current stuff that this year's grads.
What current stuff? Have data structures changed much in the decade since I graduated? (no) Have databases changed at all? (not appreciably). The only difference is that some stuff is now java and not c++. Whoopty frigging do.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
In that case I'd say drop it from your resume entirely... If you were in school, you don't necessarily need to explain what else you were doing.
Especially if you have some other projects to talk about
Yeah.. Obviously different companies allow more or less movement from a given team but I'll put myself out there as an example of why seeing someone lived on 1st Line Support for 2 years would be a negative.
My first "white-collar" job (Junior summer of U) I was hired as a Front-Line tech support person. It was at an in-house dev firm and I along with 30 others were the start of their phone-support. I never made it to the call pool. During our week of training my abilities as a burgeoning developer brought me to performing more QA/Tuning functions. At some point, when I had free time, I did spend some time on the phone but at what could best be called 3rd level support (I call you.. you can't call me)
1 week training, 2.5 months as dev-support liason, back-to-school for one last year. I don't want to degrade my fellow starting team but those that stayed in 1st level for any length of time were not destined to be developers. Everyone who had more to offer was given more responsibility (at the very least 2nd level.. most better)
Sitting on 1st-Line phone support for two years can demonstrate: Lack of ability, Lack of drive, Lack of work-ethic, Poor communication skills, etc. Maybe you are not any of those things but you certainly haven't shown that to your current employer so why should an interviewer presume anything different?
Just a thought..
Caeful on that, though - I'm a vet, and while there are lots of 'non bullet catcher' jobs, there are some caveats:
The needs of the service come before EVERYTHING. Oh, you have a contract? Sue them. Good luck. If you are in the Air Force you might be able to get them to kick you out, but in the Marines (yeah, I know, if you wanted to join for the benefits, you wouldn't go there, I know...) they will put you literally anywhere, doing anything. Smart? Great - you get to go intelligence or public affairs. Not brilliant? Postal clerk, admin or cook - god knows where. Navy? Nice bet, nice culture (in my experience, I was Marines who spent a lot of time on ship) but I hope you really like travel.
Finally, consider what you give up - you will be 'on duty' working EVERY DAY for your entire tour. You will be deployed. You will probably be in either the ass end of nowhere, or in a combat zone. Best you can hope for - a podunk base in the US with nothing but strip clubs, pawnshops, tattoo parlors and hookers, watching your fellow human beings act like asshats. No college? Guess what - you will be enlisted. That means you will be the closest thing to a serf you can be in the western world. You might get lucky and have good leadership, or you might have a bunch of ROTC and service academy grads with Napoleon complexes. God save you if you don't have good Staff NCOs - and you might not, especially if these SNCOs find out you just joined 'for the benefits'.
I joined because I actually wanted to serve. After my tour was up, I got the f*ck out as fast as I could, and when my honorable discharge papers came in, I had my uniforms at the goodwill that day.
Oh, and BTW - EVERY enlistment is 8+ years. Read the fine print on your contract - your 'active' time is the 2, 4 or 6 years, but that is just the ACTIVE duty time. The difference up to 8 years is 'inactive reserve'. They can call you up if there's a need and guess what there is right now - big need. And no, they don't just 'need' combat MOS. I knew public affairs people who were stop-lossed, and that was in 1992. Gotta have those 'reporters' and PR folk, y'know. Its critical to the war effort. Seriously, they have a Table of Organization, and if there's a slot, you will be on it, period. They don't care that you were going to college, getting married, or have just had enough. We used to say USMC stands for 'U Signed the Motherf*cking Contract' and it is true. Don't sign it unless you really want it - do yourself and your fellow potential servicemenbers a favor. No one likes serving with someone who isn't really motivated to be there.
Sorry. Rant over. Good luck.
Honestly, I hate to be mean but you need to know the truth. If you're getting any kind of interview, the problem isn't your resume it's your interview skills. You wouldn't get an interview if they weren't ok with the tech support background.
The resume gets you in the door, the interview skills get you the job.
"First line technical support". Have you ever called first line technical support? The most common impression of FLTS is they can't manage walking and chewing gum at the same time. I know that's unfair because in almost every case FLTS must follow scripts written more with a view of "idiot customers AND idiot tech" than just "idiot customer" rather than "There's a real problem here that needs to be solved".
First step is to get out of first tier support. Or support entirely, which is what you're trying to do.
There are local charitiable organisations that need tech help and can't afford it. Like your food bank, shelter, red cross, hell, even the BBB, NPR, PBS, or Red Cross. Go to them and offer to help with tech issues. They likely don't know squat about tech, but if you are even half way effective, they'll write a glowing recommendation because you bailed them out of trobles they couldn't solve themselves. You help not just yourself, but others that are in dire straits. For nothing else, that's worthy right there.
Example: I wrote a customer master module to be used in accounting for customers, vendors, shippers, anywhere it was needed to tie a company/person/vendor/whathave you with multiple addresses, purchase orders, sales orders, trouble tickets, history (careful to not over normalize so as to update historical records with current info) blah blah blah. End result, I used this exact module over and over and over again for pledge drives, charity auctions, setting port-a-pottys, vending machines, you name it.
I know a gal that started out as first line tech support. Climbed to managing the help desk, from there, went to web master, and is now a director of IT somewhere else. All in four years. And she's good... really good.
It can be done. If someone wants to type cast you, it's because you let them do it and don't show them why they are wrong... or they are simply grossly stupid and unobservant. In the fist case, you've only yourself to blame, in the second, better you don't work there anyway.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
While grammar nazi-ing on someone, it's poor form to blatantly misspell ... unnecessary has 1 c, and two s's. I'll refrain from calling _you_ a twit.
"Actually I think every developer should do a year or two in end user technical support.
All too often there is a disconnect between those that design and code software and the end user"
YES! PLEASE.
I work in tech support, and the bane of my life is application developers who think they're God's gift to the Turing machine and yet don't have the first clue as to how their precious little world-saving application is going to 1) share data with other systems, 2) be packaged and deployed and patched on real-world environments, and 3) be tested, debugged and trouble-shooted by the *users*.
Most application developers seem to have the unconscious assumption that *their* program is the only one that exists in the whole wide universe, that *its* data store is the only data worth considering, and that they, the developers, are the only people who are ever going to need to understand how their program works and test it. Because *of course* it's never going to have any bugs after it's shipped, that's quite unthinkable. And if there are, why, you'll be happy to erase all your data and reinstall from scratch, including Random OS Support Library Foobar version 42.3.1415, precisely, which will never conflict with any other installed version. Because you're just 'a user', and all you get is a black box that either works or breaks mysteriously.
Except tech support people are a programmer's worst nightmare: users who can think, and who need to get at the guts of your software to make it actually *work*.
A programmer who sneers at tech support people is a programmer who quite simply HAS NO CLUE as to how software is used in the real world and the wider context of what they're doing. And that kind of programmer has no business writing software at all.
Programmer arrogance is a huge part of the software quality crisis.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
If you made it to the first interview then your background (in tech support) isn't the problem. The interviewer's time is worth too much to spend it interviewing the dozens of applicants whose background indicated a problem.
No, the problem is you. Either your presentation is poor (did you dress in a suit? conservative tie? do you smell? have open pustules? how long is your hair?), your mad computer engineering skillz don't add up to what you think they do OR (and this last one is very common) you didn't exhibit a can-do attitude.
Did you disdain your tech support background? It may be that the company is looking for a junior developer to interface with an upscale client, help with the testing, implement a little of the the easy stuff but mostly translate requirements for the senior devs. If you truly have the skills, that's as good a bridge as any. Better really: a cross-disciplinary role puts you in a controlling position, where your talent (if you have it) will shine.
The worst person I've ever interviewed explained that in a systems administration role there should never be a reason why he'd be expected to stay after 5 pm. The second worst explained that he was no stranger to keeping a cot in his office to deal with routinely long hours. The former indicated a bad attitude combined with poor judgment: an unrealistic assessment of a system administrator's job. The latter indicated a fellow who worked harder when I wanted someone to work smarter... a quality sysadmin prevents more fires than he fights. If you're fighting enough fires to need a cot in your office, you're not up to the task.
My favorite line in an interview is: "Point me at the problem that's giving you the most grief. I have a broad range of expertise and I'm ready to put it to use where it will best benefit you."
Yes, there is some reluctance to hire folks outside of their background. I recently made the transition from the systems administration track to software development track, so I've experienced it. Nevertheless, the only interview that didn't generate a job offer was one where the company specifically did not want a software developer.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If anything the mass amount of linux users shows just how crappy the proprietary options are, just look are some of the hoops that people have to jump through to use linux yet they contiue to use it...and WHY?
I can't speak for everyone, but I started running Linux back in '99 because it was an entertaining waste of time to poke around, break stuff, find out what I did wrong, etc. I didn't consider myself to be jumping through hoops, but playing with a large pile of Lego/K'nex pieces. Perhaps it's curiosity, rather than disdain for the alternatives, that's driving Linux and other OSS projects.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.