This is my first foray into the ITNet Pro Club and I wanted to pass along some of my background and what to expect in a career as an IT Technician. Information technology is a growing, ever-evolving field because technology is constantly changing. There are always new challenges, networks are changing, companies are expanding and there’s always gonna be a need for IT support.
I spent 27 years working in inside sales for the industrial tool field. Then I changed careers and worked as an IT Technician for five years at a casino in Las Vegas before I transitioned into an IT Instructor at Laurus College. I was doing a lot of training and I carry that into my teaching career.
What is an IT Technician?
An IT Technician installs, troubleshoots, and supports hardware, software, and users at a company or organization. You’ll be dealing with network managers, programmers, and users. You need a lot of customer service skills.
One thing about being an IT Technician is that you have to know how to deal with people. Angry or happy, friendly or fearsome. You have to deal with people of all kinds: users, managers, directors, C-suite, etc. You have to stay on your toes because sometimes your users will be people who can control how your career is going to go. Always be professional and courteous.
The General Purpose of an IT Technician
The general purpose of an IT Technician ranges from resetting passwords to computer repair to babysitting networks. In short: we plug stuff in. You’ll sometimes be setting up a new computer, scanner, printer, or all manner of electronic gadgets. You’ll be installing network equipment, plugging in network cords for patch panels, running new lines, and plugging in cables from an office to a patch panel or switch of some sort.
What is an IT Helpdesk Technician?
People are either going to be IT technicians or managers depending on the career that they want to be in, but I encourage people to start as IT Helpdesk Technicians. An IT Helpdesk Technician takes calls and messages from users and creates electronic records called tickets. Then, the IT First Responders work to respond to the issue.
The purpose of the ticketing system is to create order out of chaos. When a user calls in with an issue you put together all the information for the issue into a ticket to create work orders. Issues could be a printer that isn’t working or a hardware issue or a software issue. It could be that a user can’t get ahold of a website or a networking issue.
Working With Customers
As an IT Technician or Helpdesk Technician, you’ll receive calls and messages from your users. Usually, if you’re help desk you’ll have a telephone on your desk and carry a cellphone with you.
Every time I would pick up the phone I guessed: friend or foe? Sometimes you’ll get a friendly call: “Hey can you help me out with this.” Sometimes you get a call that’s less friendly from someone that will be angry and blame it on IT. Customer service skills are an extremely important part of being a good IT Technician.
Typical Duties as an IT Technician
Where I worked at the casino IT Technicians were both Helpdesk and First Responders. That meant that we were answering phone calls as well as resetting passwords, remote logging into computers using VMWare, and physically going to locations to help users.
As an IT Technician, your job is to become a reporter and detective. Take a notepad with you and write everything down You have to talk with the customer and find out what is going on.
- What is the issue?
- When did it start?
- Where is the issue?
- Can you replicate the error?
Then you complete the ticket if you can solve the issue. Otherwise update the ticket if a part needs to be ordered or escalate it if it needs attention by a network administrator, developer, or programmer. You put all the steps you performed into the ticket to document your progress. That way, if a similar issue comes up again you can find what was done to resolve it.
Working With Hardware Issues
Often I would discover someone had tried to work on a computer themselves. This generally makes the situation worse and causes difficulties for IT Technicians. The issue may also be old hardware that needs replacing.
A scenario I ran into a couple of years ago was a client with a computer that simply did not run well. They kept calling saying it was not working, that they could not get anything to work. The windows logo would spin and nothing would get done. After looking at the equipment we discovered it was using an older DDR2 RAM and needed an upgrade. There wasn’t much else we could do to speed the system up.
The manager took it upon himself to purchase a bunch of RAM that was incompatible with that computer’s motherboard. If it’s not compatible there is very little we can do. They either needed the right type of RAM or a new motherboard. In this situation, they wound up purchasing a new system, but they wasted money by failing to check with IT first.
Working With Passwords
We used to get scenarios where people would call up and ask, “What’s my password?” and then hang up. Of course, this doesn’t tell us which system they are trying to access, how they are trying to access it, or any other necessary information.
Passwords can be difficult because when a user has an issue or a bad day and something goes haywire, they try everything to get it to work, and then call the help desk. They’ll start pounding the keys, typing too fast trying to get into the system so they misspell, miss keys, etc. My advice is your time. You’re not going to get in any faster by typing faster so make sure that you put in all your information correctly and you won’t have that issue. Going too quickly means you might misspell or forget your password. These days places can require a more complex password that is harder to type or remember. Relax and take your time, it’s not a race.
Working with Cables & Switches
The casino I worked for had 150,000 square feet of floor in the gaming area. This does not include offices, executives, human resources, compliance, engineering, housekeeping, and an entire 27-story hotel. It was quite a bit of walking. In between the table games, there was a lot of equipment such as tablets that show information for players, podiums for workers to log into, as well as scanners, printers, ID readers, and all sorts of equipment in the cash cage. That’s a lot of cables.
I often think of how many miles of network cable were hidden in the ceiling and floors. Vendors would come and run lines through the high ceilings and you’d see old cabling no longer used so there was a mix of old and new cables. We had boxes and boxes of cat-6 cabling because they would do long runs up to 300 feet. Engineering would come in to run the cables and IT would come in to terminate the ends, set up the patch panels, mark and label everything, and get everything ready for networking to set all those things in place.
Inexperienced IT Technicians go to a patch panel and start unplugging and plugging things in without checking with the network manager. You have to be very specific when you’re working on these types of equipment. You have to check to make sure you’re going into one of the right ports. If you unplug something incorrectly, the IT manager or the network manager is going to want an explanation. Make sure you always follow the directions that they give you and double-check before doing anything potentially harmful.
Working with eWaste
Another big part of what to expect in a career as an IT Technician is eWaste. Getting rid of old and unnecessary equipment is part of the job. We had a big Rubbermaid cart on wheels. The IT Technicians would throw anything in there, printers scanners, multifunction devices, computer towers, just throw them in. These devices have to be disposed of properly. Check with your IT Manager for directions on how devices should be stored and disposed of.
Training New IT Technicians
I started getting involved in training and found that often my co-workers would not want to train new IT Technicians. When someone new comes in I was happy to give them everything I can and help them as much as I can. At the end of the day, you have to work with these people. You want to make sure the person has the same ability as you to handle calls. It takes the pressure off. Training them correctly means they can handle part of the workload.
At Laurus College, we train students to be ready for the IT field. We offer a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology Systems Management and an Associate Degree in Information Technologies and Network Systems. Our industry-tested instructors are ready to help you Develop the knowledge you’ll need to offer technical assistance with computer hardware and software, and learn to perform maintenance to ensure networks operate correctly with minimal interruption.
