Besides ER/OR Tech/Nursing Care Tech/AnesthesiaTech jobs, what other hospital jobs don´t require certification?

Does Tier 1 help desk jobs require actual training or certification?

• There has been a recent opening of a Tier 1 help desk job. I am a second year undergrad in electrical engineering that has had previous experience in providing simple technology aid to a small company of 20 over summer. I was wondering if Tier 1 help desk jobs actually require training for me to take that job? Or should any person that knows how to troubleshoot with google be capable of handling the situations encountered.

• Answer:

  What technical training you will require depends on the scope of what you support. While an ability to troubleshoot using Google - and the ability to logically break down a problem that usually comes with it - is highly useful to a Helpdesk agent, it won't do you any good at all if you are supporting applications only in use in your company. Generally speaking most people with an engineering background can easily pick up the technical skills required to do the job. However, that doesn't mean you can do the job or do it well. I have been a Customer Service Representative, I have been a Team Leader of CSRs and I have been a manager and employer of CSRs, and I can tell you that some of the best I have worked with (and hired) started with very little technical knowledge, in some cases - none. What they all shared - all of the best* - was a desire to help people and a receptiveness to the "soft" training (i.e. non-technical, customer service-related) that was part of the job. This was both classroom based training prior to answering calls and also on-the-job once the person had started to take calls (with a mentor). And please note: I am not talking about the kind of 100% scripted nonsense you sometimes hear from badly managed Helpdesks, nor am I talking about the kind of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_Room_(film), http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/always-be-closing.aspsales-type stuff. I'm talking about techniques like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_listening, characteristics like [genuine] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy, http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCS_85.htm and a host of other, non-technical methods critical to delivering outstanding customer service. To summarise: the happiest and most productive CSRs are not the most technical, they never are (though they may become technical in the course of their career). The happiest and most productive are those who enjoy helping people and who are receptive to the soft skills training described above. In fact, it is much easier to find technical people than it is to find people with an 'aptitude for people' - I've lost track of the number of https://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-us/mcse-certification.aspxs and the like that were simply very, very poor at communicating technical concepts to anyone who didn't have an MCSE (and even sometimes then). Therefore, the direct answer to your question is that you probably require a bare minimum of technical training, depending on how many custom applications your customers use (where you won't find the answer on Google). The training you will require however is the quality, communication and other soft skills that any professional-class helpdesk will provide and require as standard. This will help you become a more effective source of help to your customers with the knock on effects of making you happier and more productive in your job. * "best" = the most successful and most quickly promoted and also the ones who liked their jobs the most.