How to get out of a dead-end helpdesk position:
Solve problems, not (just) tickets
- Yes, tickets matter to many orgs, but reductions in actual problems represented by tickets are far more valuable. Would you rather close five tickets for a single problem or solve the problem once?
- Be the person who is willing to dig into problems and why they are generating so much volume. If you are able to do heads-down time and solve problems while not actively working a ticket queue, your boss is far more likely to get you to drop out of the queue to try to solve the real issues at hand.
- Bonus: learn how to solve your boss’s problems. If your boss can depend on you to make them look good and solve their issues (things like a batch of soon-to-breach SLA tickets, a systemic issue that needs triage, etc. not your boss’s buggy laptop or phone), you can bet that he/she will want to keep you around and make sure that you are satisfied in your role. Finding people to do a job that you’ve trained them to do is not too difficult; finding people to actively solve your problems and make you and the team you manage look effective is very hard and managers tend to hold on to folks like that.
Go above and beyond… during business hours
- This phrase gets tossed around a lot: Go above and beyond. You should do that, but only do that when you are working, and you shouldn’t be working all the time. It’s one thing to help out occasionally “off the clock” but it’s another thing to always be on the clock too. Going above and beyond at all times is a recipe for burnout and resentment (plus that becomes the new baseline, and going above and beyond that baseline becomes hugely unsustainable).
- Be the person who owns issues when appropriate, follows through on commitments, does follow-up, etc. Make sure that if you’re going to bother to show up for work, you are among the best on your team and always learning.
Focus on you
- If you want to show that you can do higher value work, start with yourself; make yourself the kind of person who gets up early, has a healthy workout routine, can be depended on, etc.
- Make sure this is inward focus. It is not particularly valuable here to demonstrate your value or greatness only in comparison to someone else. (“I can do that job better than Sally.”)
Do things that make you happy
- Make sure you are spending time on yourself (coupled with the Focus on you bullet above). If you bring a grumpy, tired, angry self to the office every day, you are not going to be pleasant to be around and most likely will not have the best of work output. If you are unable to bring a better version of yourself to the office, you will have a very difficult road ahead of you.
- Enjoy gaming? Do it. Like craft beer or fine whiskey? Have one after work. But don’t let either of those things (or similar vices) get in the way of getting enough sleep and taking care of yourself otherwise. You won’t be able to improve your physical fitness when you’re always hungover or sleep-deprived.
- If possible, find something that makes you happy that allows you to share it. This can be in the form of charity work or outreach or just spending time with folks.
Polish/sharpen/refine your resume
- Always always always be refining and honing your resume. I can’t tell you the amount of highly experienced folks who “phone it in” because they haven’t updated their resume in 10 years, so they end up stagnating and languishing in roles they wish they could escape. Trying to sum up 10 years worth of accomplishments is incredibly daunting, especially when that summary needs to be consumable by someone else.
- Don’t feel bad about dropping off or significantly reducing the lines that your first job(s) occupy on your resume. No one will really care about the first job you had out of college when you have 10-12 years of experience and five other jobs after that. Focus on the most recent and (hopefully) relevant jobs to highlight.
- Keep it short. The general rule of thumb is one page for every 5-10 years experience. Do not list absolutely everything you’ve ever done; similarly, do not just list what your duties were for a particular position. List the things that you accomplished that would not be obvious to someone from reading a job description. This is harder with more junior roles, but it can be done. Completed root cause analysis on top five monthly recurring issues. Redefined escalation path for tier 3 incidents. Etc.
- Consider making your LinkedIn look more attractive to would-be employers. Making your LinkedIn and resume look exactly the same may not work the best, but you should be able to provide some of the highlights on your LinkedIn profile that show that it is up-to-date and relevant.
Keep track of the problems you solve
- Keep a running document of the issues that you resolve, particularly if they help others on your team. Having a document that is up-to-date is essentially your value statement to your boss: it will help you demonstrate your worth anytime someone needs to know “what you’ve been doing.” This is also useful around review time.
Learn something new that you can use in your job
- Pick up a new skill that will help you in your day-to-day. If you have any sort of access to Active Directory, learn more about how distributed your environment is, how long password resets take to hit all sites (and where they are), etc.
- This also shows your boss and leadership that you are willing to take some higher initiative than simply clocking in and doing what you’re told. This dovetails nicely into…
Think like a higher level employee
- If you want to be treated like a more valuable employee, you must act like a more valuable employee. Many jobs do not give you a ton freedom to exercise your own judgement and to make decisions on your own, so it is incredibly important that you make use of the freedom that you do have. Start to ask questions of other teams on issues that largely affect their team’s work, learn more about what they do and why, etc.
- Also, do not get stuck in the weeds about one customer who calls in and complains the loudest. Unless this is a VIP (and if you’ve ever dealt with doctors or professors before, recognize that no, they are not all VIPs despite what they may think), one-off loud complainers’ issues should not be weighted more than any other customer calling in with the same issue – as long as the issue is not systemic. Shake off any bad interactions you have, zoom out, and try to see the problem or issue with more perspective than a loud phone call or other interaction.
Improve on your own time and on your own schedule
- The cliche If you want something you’ve never had before, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done before applies here. You don’t have to set up a crazy home lab from surplussed off-warranty 1U servers, but you do have to pick up a book that helps you be a better employee once in a while.
- Not a big reader? Now’s a great time to start. Books are a great, easy, and cheap way to pick up new perspectives and knowledge. If you are bound by the phrase, “I’m just not the person who reads books” then you’ll just not be the person who gets very far without some incredible luck serendipity.
- Be willing to pay for coursework/frameworks/materials. There is a ton of free content out there, but if it was easy to consume and use, you’d already have done it (and so would everyone else). Spending money on something gets you some skin in the game. Don’t let your investment go to waste because you couldn’t find the time to make it happen. Make it happen.
- Certifications are not the end-all, be-all. No one cares if you are VMware certified if a.) you don’t have a ton of VMware hands-on experience, and b.) you cannot communicate with others and/or know when to ask for help, etc. Taking a course on how to generally troubleshoot issues more effectively or triage an incident or communicate with leadership will get you much farther than a technical certification. (Some argue that many technical certifications just size up your ability to pass certifications rather than actually assess your technical knowledge, to which I might have to agree.)
- Commit to one morning/evening per week if you are having trouble finding the time. Everyone has time, you just may have to get up earlier or go to sleep later.
Find your strength
- What do you enjoy doing? What gives you a rush or sense of accomplishment? What is the best way to end your workday that improves your mood or drive home? Whatever that thing is is what you want to do more of.
- Enjoy solving a problem for a customer? You might enjoy desktop support.
- Enjoy patching together some oddball steps to make something work for someone? You might enjoy solutions engineering.
- Enjoy building bespoke laptops for users? You might enjoy desktop engineering.
- If you find something you can see yourself doing long term, try to develop that skill even if you can’t necessarily use it in your day to day.
Be patient, but deliberate and determined.
- These things all take time. This will not happen overnight, and you will likely have some setbacks. Keep at it.
- Find people in the industry who have done what you want to do and reach out to them. You’ll be surprised how willing people are to help and respond to folks looking to overcome similar challenges that they themselves have faced. People generally like being helpful, and this is no different.
How have some of you transcended the dreaded helpdesk job? What was your biggest challenge?