Stuck in helpdesk support with no direction..

I have worked on the IT helpdesk for 10 months and what bothers me alot is I have no idea how to get out.. I have no directions on where to go from here and do not know what my options are.. Can anyone help?

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Reply 1

Sydmin

Original post by Compton Menace

Yep - learn stuff.

To advance anywhere in the IT industry, you need to constantly and continuously learn stuff. I don't mean going out and reading rafts and rafts of books (if that's your thing then go for it), but getting prime CV fodder that you can actually back up with tangible examples when you're at interview. Professionally, in the work place this can be done by just doing what you do and taking on more responsibilities as you get given them. You will learn how to manage Active Directory, MS Exchange, Group Policy - all this good stuff is stuff you can expand on in work hours and then plaster all over your CV as its real, tangible experience.

Now I guess the real question is, what do you learn? Well, what do you want to do? The IT support career ladder isn't so tall - you can max out in a few years and spend your life on average pay doing the same grind every day (unless you go into management, an no self-respecting IT monkey should do that). Sadly I know people that have spent their whole lives in support and they loathe it. There is programming, systems administration and specialist support roles that are abundant at the moment. You should identify and target one of these types of role - go out and find job advertisements and look down the "Required" and "Desireable" lists. I guarantee at least a couple of those will be stuff you've either heard of or stuff you're currently doing. If you can't decide on a role or field to go into, ask here and tell us what you currently enjoy about what you do now and what you feel are the downsides.

So the next step, once you've identified that, would be to expand your working knowledge in that area. There are plenty of ways to do this - for free - on your home desktop computer. Active Directory environment - did you know you could set one of these up, perfectly legal and not costing a penny, by using free downloads direct from Microsoft and Oracle?

Alternatively, if self-study doesn't do it for you, go back to college. Do evening classes and focus on one area. Find your niche in the industry and beaver away, both in and out of work hours, at making yourself good at that area. You will learn a lot by doing that and guaranteed, will nail any IT interview you apply for if you say the words "Yeah I did this at home".