IT experts opinions please

G1BB0

G1BB0

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sooooo as per my other thread, currently on a crash course to revive the memory banks and update them slightly, got a tech based interview on Tuesday and whilst my general skills are still ok and Win7 & 8 troubleshooting are fairly decent what would you concentrate on for a 1st/2nd line support role?

I am deffo gonna do my MCSE over the next 18 months and even after 1 day I am getting used to server 2012 and AD (just gonna start learning a bit of scripting for AD....)

I dont wanna be worrying about too much that might be of no use. My old role was general desktop stuff, remote access, basic server admin, Mail marshall stuff so pretty basic although I build and config pc's still hence the desktop o/s side is pretty sound.

Can it be honed in a week aswell haha :)
(dont 7 hrs of cbt nuggets and tinkering today alone)
 
Get yourself familiar with AD - very crucial in a 1st/2nd line a Windows environment

Also try and find out there ticketing tool - is it remedy ? What about monitoring or is it purely call based support.

Is it user desktop support or also server/application support ?
 
G1BB0 said:
pass, probably more desktop tbh. Can't believe I dropped mcse and ccna when I joined BT.... OH well, never too old :)
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CCNA is very good - MCSE is ok just windows ball ache.

If it's more desktop then AD and Windows OS and maybe even Apple OS as a lot of companies have a great deal of Apple Desktops. Also have a quick look at Blackberry Support
 
erm Phil, I have a week! well I havent, got aslong as it takes I guess. I must admit, I am actually feeling (despite being out of a job) happier than I have in a long time. I do crave a challenge :D
 
G1BB0 said:
erm Phil, I have a week! well I havent, got aslong as it takes I guess. I must admit, I am actually feeling (despite being out of a job) happier than I have in a long time. I do crave a challenge :D
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AD is the main one then mate then Windows Desktop OS support :D
 
For 1st/2nd line concentrate on desktop and office. The corporate world is still dominated by ms so don't bother with apple or Linux etc. AD admin is a must it
 
Can i ask if the company supports a call center? If so did your role with BT / open reach help you to understand their PSTN, ISDNs or SIP etc?

That could be an advantage if you have experience.

If not i would not get to hung up on not having a MS or CISCO badge on your CV. Honestly having interviewed desktop support and Infrastructure 3/4th line guys, having the quals does not equate to having the skills.

more important than anything IMO is attitude. Inexperience can be ignored if the candidate shows a real desire to learn and understand. Better still, show that you are more interested in discovering a problems root cause and resolving that, instead of repeatedly implementing workarounds.

A desire to learn, good attitude and the ability to analytically diagnose problems is what i would look for in a desktop support engineer.

Tech wise Win OS, outlook / exchange, Active directory, Group policy, Antivirus and hardware break-fix are really the things you should understand the basics of.

An understanding of how a service desk functions (ticketing, helpdesk, escalation etc) will also be a benefit.

Make a point however of grilling the interviewer about what technologies they use in house and show a real interest in diving in amount it and learning the lot, should you win the role

best of luck
 
excellent post tuggles, really appreciated. I have a lot of knowledge about CP's, PSTN, ADSL, a little about ISDN. I also know a fair bit about configs, Wireless

I will concentrate on AD and exchange me thinks. I know for a fact, a bit like when I studied law, nobody knows everything but its knowing how to find out what you dont know and apply it accordingly to make you appear to know everything :)
 
I'd concentrate on RS232 interface leads.


[video=youtube_share;CDlj0jBtYmQ]http://youtu.be/CDlj0jBtYmQ[/video]


Sorry, I didn't read the thing about having to be an IT expert....
 
G1BB0 said:
excellent post tuggles, really appreciated. I have a lot of knowledge about CP's, PSTN, ADSL, a little about ISDN. I also know a fair bit about configs, Wireless

I will concentrate on AD and exchange me thinks. I know for a fact, a bit like when I studied law, nobody knows everything but its knowing how to find out what you dont know and apply it accordingly to make you appear to know everything :)
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Honestly, if the company supports a call center, having someone who understands the mysteries of bl00dy BT exchanges, lack of communication between Open reach and BT and Bt's internal processes for incident management would be a big plus!!.



:D
 
Gibbo, I started as general IT Support lacky doing general desktop and peripheral support and then over a year ago was promoted to our infrastructure team, so now looking after main domain servers, networks, blade infrastructure, VMware clusters, etc.

I'd already done my CCNA, which I did in my own time using evening classes and it was pretty tough. When I got the infrastructure role they put me on a 13 day intensive MCITP:EA (2008) which I think is now back to MCSE for 2012. It was pretty tough but managed to get it by the scruff of the neck. Booked in for CCNA Voice next month to extend my CCNA and then doing a couple of checkpoint firewall courses in July.

I get quite a few emails from recruitment companies and a lot of the main skills required around cambridge for sys admin stuff is AD/DNS/DHCP etc, exchange or office 365, VMware or hyper v, Netapp storage seems quite popular.

Like everyone else has said get AD and networking down, I ran a few VM's at home and some virtual networks to get to grips with it.

Sounds like your pretty handy with voice so maybe ccna switching and routing followed by ccna voice and ccnp voice could be something to look at.
 
cheers Phil, already running a vmware setup and got a couple of machines I can whack clients onto, might pick up a cheapo cisco router/switch to play with and I still got my old KVM switches somewhere thankfully, I was doing ccna 7 years ago but as soon as I went onto BT I stopped :(

the spare room is being prepped tomorrow lol
 
G1BB0 said:
cheers Phil, already running a vmware setup and got a couple of machines I can whack clients onto, might pick up a cheapo cisco router/switch to play with and I still got my old KVM switches somewhere thankfully, I was doing ccna 7 years ago but as soon as I went onto BT I stopped :(

the spare room is being prepped tomorrow lol
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have a look at packet tracer or gns3, both cisco network sim software. quite good for playing with switches and routers on the cheap lol
 
oooh well reminded, I may well have a cisco sim on my storage drive. Was going through it the other day and the amount of tools, o/s etc I have surprised me. Why didnt I carry on for the last 7 years, I would be super tech by now.
 
For Call center style work, MS office in its various flavours would be good, as would a knowledge of XP, WIN 7 & 8, AD servers, some VM ware, DNS and basic network skills.

I know jack about windows and servers, but working in IT since the age of 17 I see what's going. My area in IT, is networks, mainly Cisco kit, and network security mainly Cisco ASA firewalls and IPS.

The GNS network sim is spot on, especially if you can get the various IOS's for the routers and firewalls, you can then make any network you want.

We've started using it at work to replicate our network and test out new ideas, rather than have to have the physical kit.
 
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