Technical Support
IT Helpdesk
I have been an operator for the University of Louisville’s IT help desk. During that time, we used an older ticketing sytem called HEAT. The majority of calls were password resets for students and faculty members. We had very limited capabilities, so most issues outside of password resets were sent to the appropriate department using the ticketing system. The helpdesk area had Mac computers available for us to use when students had questions related to Macs, but there were no computers we could use for the students that used Linux. Most of these students had issues connecting to the school’s WPA Enterprise Wi-Fi network. NetworkManager had become the default network manager for Ubuntu at this time, but it was not as easy as it is now. I was tasked to create documentation for the helpdesk on how to connect to the school’s Wi-Fi network for these students.
Co-Op
During high school, I took a co-op class that allowed us to do work. Our supervisor’s feedback is what earned our grade for the class. I worked for the person in charge of the school’s IT. During my time there, I assisted teachers and students with their computer issues, took inventory of computers and audio/video equipment, and performed cleaning of the computer systems throughout the school.
Retail
Working in retail seems a little odd to include for technical support experience, but when you work in the electronics department, customers expect you to know how to fix all sorts of problems. Many customers come in with phone problems, the majority of which take only a few minutes to troubleshoot and fix, so we do sometimes do that. They sometimes ask computer or printer questions as well. Some questions are simple, like how to print out pictures from the photo kiosks. Other questions can be very difficult and require a lot of critical thinking to properly answer.
Working in electronics doesn’t just mean customers ask us lots of questions. It means other employees do as well! As we tend to learn and adapt to new processes that the store creates fairly easily, people tend to come to us with questions when they don’t understand something. It also happens when they have issues with company apps or even company-provided devices. I tend to be the go-to person for the company devices in particular.