

Without this attention to detail, you’ll find yourself putting out more self-made fires than necessary. While you aren’t always dealing with highly complex issues, you’ll routinely encounter situations where attention to detail and critical thinking are crucial for coming up with innovative solutions to unique problems. Skill 3: Attention to detailĮverything required of an IT help desk professional, from installing new systems to documenting error solutions, requires a more precise attention to detail than many other other fields. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time fixing the same problems for end users over, and over, and over again because your documentation wasn’t able to guide them to the solution. You don’t need to weave words of gold like Hemingway, just enough to explain a problem and solution so others can understand your solution. The ability to document and explain issues easily is extremely important and valuable because you’re not just solving issues for one person, you’re solving them for everybody who runs into those problems. Skill 2: Documentationĭocumentation skills are a must in this industry. Not everyone will come to you with an easily solved problem. I’ve called help desk support over things like misshapen buttons on a website I was working with, and my issues were fixed because the professionals understood the need to adapt to different situations and problems.

THE ASCENT BEST SKILLS PROFESSIONAL
Adaptability is a core skill that every help desk professional should have.Īdapting to the issues at hand is very useful because you never know how technical or confusing an issue might be. Imagine working in a career where everyone wants to speak to the manager, but the problems are far more technical in nature. Skill 1: AdaptabilityĮvery career path requires adaptability, but few paths require it as much as working IT support. However, I’ve boiled down many of those basic help desk skills into 10 of the most important hard and soft skills of IT problem management. The master list of tech support skills that every help desk professional ought to know is extensive. Although these terms are used interchangeably, they are different once you get down to brass tacks.Īn IT help desk provides immediate technical support for infrequent issues and problems, whereas a service desk focuses on the service requests of end users, such as onboarding, managing assets, providing laptops to employees, etc. While many of their functions are the same, such as managing support tickets and handling requests, help desks and service desks address different needs. (More on this in the next section.) Help desk vs.

Technical support responsibilities typically stay within the technical realm and don’t drift into other administrative support tasks unless absolutely necessary.
THE ASCENT BEST SKILLS SOFTWARE
Help desk support is another way to say in-house technical support, which deals with all kinds of maintenance and support tasks such as software installation and network maintenance. However, before we get into that, let’s dive into what help desk support is and how it differs from other types of support. This list is also helpful if you’re looking to start your career in the IT help desk field and want a head start on the skills you need to know. I’ve put together a list of the top 10 IT skills to look for when hiring new help desk employees. Due to the volume and technical nature of enterprise business needs, in-house IT help desk support (aka IT tech support) is the way to go. While smaller companies can rely on outside contractors to deal with their technical support issues, this strategy becomes less viable as your business grows. Whether you’re seeking new help desk hires or you’re looking to start a career in IT support, these are the top 10 skills you’ll need in this field.
