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Possible promotion - Any managers of Help Desks here?

Tweak155

Tweak155

Lifer
Well I've been working at the same company for almost 8 years (since I just turned 17) and have been moving my way up.

I started at $5.25 an hr and just last year my salary was just over $60k. Not horrible for 24, but nothing mind blowing either, I'm sure better has been done but I think I've done fairly well.

I worked a bit over 5 years out of our stores and now work for corporate office for almost 2 years so I've increasing knowledge with the company for some time now.

Well, they posted the (read: only one) manager position which I figured was going to be given to the temp working the job currently, but he has been there for 6 months and they posted the position again. So either 1 - He finally accepted an offer or 2 - They decided he just isn't going to budge, but either way, I applied for the job and got an interview.

Now that you have a general history, here are a few specs of the job:

1 - Salary range (with bonus) starts about $80k, and can reach as high as $90k for the base (this is entry level).
2 - I'm the 2nd longest running person in the DEPARTMENT, there is only 1 person that has more tenure than me under the Help Desk category (this includes managers, supervisors, technicians and our Director) and also the 2nd person with the company in general.
3 - I know my stuff and my supervisors praise me, so I'm generally known as a go-to guy.
4 - I have a degree that applies to the position.


All that being said, I realize the likelihood of me being offered the spot is near zilch, but I'm looking for any tips / hints / ideas that give me the largest percentage of that zilch because there may be domino positions for which I qualify.

I posted the salary information to gauge what I should accept if they offer.

There you have it, what say you?


UPDATE:

Just had the interview. Went reallllyyyy well. I didn't know what to expect but I had responses for all his questions.

I still don't think I'm going to get THIS spot, but I got out of it what I wanted. He knows my interests for other positions and he mentioned new ones coming up and he is going to let me know next week 🙂

Yay!

Ok I'm done prospectively losing my man card that is probably already lost.

UPDATE x 2:

Well, I got what I wanted... I spoke with my manager last week (the temp got the job as we were expecting) and they want to offer me a new job assuming it gets approved by HR. Our fiscal year ends Apr 2nd and we are re-structuring that month or the month after.

That being said, I have no idea the salary but they did indicate they WANT me to move back to take it. I've been pushing to keep it remote and trying to prove I can do something like that remote. This is my next step!

UPDATE x 3:

This is long overdue but since I just got back to Anand, I decided to look at the posts I started, this being one of them. I ended up getting to stay working remote and work 9-5p m-f and get holidays etc off. Overall better job but not a major step up salary wise. In fact its about the same salary but no OT worked to get it, however with salary jobs you are going to work OT at some point or another... I think overall I work less so yay me. Official title is Project Specialist. Been working it for 9 months or so.

One major downside is I have traveled WAY more than what was lead on. I'd say I'm gone 25% of the time (in fact I leave Monday for a few days). I plan on demanding change in pay but I'm sure they will say "this is only temporary". Either way its much better than what I was doing, and I get picked up on some major projects.
 
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I used to do this before I moved to a new position bridging support and development. Don't take this the wrong way, but at 24, I don't think you'd have enough life experience to be a department manager. Instead of fixing things, you're going to be fixing people and their behavior. It takes a whole different skill set. I would become close to the person the does get the job and advise/offer suggestions for a few years.

You'll see everything that person goes through and you may not like it. I myself HATED it. Management jobs like those above break down to being overpaid babysitters.
 
I work for a help desk and our manager is pretty good at letting us know what's going on and such so I have a small idea of what he has to deal with on a daily bassis. One thing as a help desk manager is you're usually the first point of contact for getting shit on. You'll have the IT manager of a customer call in yelling at you that a ticket is 5 minutes overdue, or a ticket was closed but the problem started happening again, or any other issue they'll find to yell about. There's also TONS of meetings. I've also learned that when my boss goes on a 1 hour meeting at 9:00am, he'll be back around 1:00pm. 😛 These meetings get pretty heated and last longer then the customer says.

Of course this really depends on what kind of help desk, aka which services, etc. The help desk I work at handles internet, voice, and managed services. It's usually the managed service customers that will give us trouble because those are the million dollar contracts so they expect everything to be done 100% perfect.
 
Originally posted by: Fritzo
I used to do this before I moved to a new position bridging support and development. Don't take this the wrong way, but at 24, I don't think you'd have enough life experience to be a department manager. Instead of fixing things, you're going to be fixing people and their behavior. It takes a whole different skill set. I would become close to the person the does get the job and advise/offer suggestions for a few years.

You'll see everything that person goes through and you may not like it. I myself HATED it. Management jobs like those above break down to being overpaid babysitters.
Click to expand...


This is exactly why I know my chances are zilch for this particular spot, but I'd still like to make an impression with my Director.

Also, as noted, I think I am of the right age to move up a single step to supervisor given how my department is run (we hire as low as 18) and have had 25 year olds in this position before. So I'm really aiming for the next step with this interview.

But at the same time - If I can be impressive there is definitely no harm to it, and if I somehow skip a step, no hurt there either 🙂
 
Happy to hear that your interview went well. Hopefully, tenure and loyalty to the company pay off for you. You've been there quite awhile, worked your way up and even have a "position related degree." Sometimes that piece of paper is the deciding factor in who gets the management position.

As has been said, managing people is a whole different ball of wax. You may know everything there is to know about PCs, Active Directory and the switches and routers your company uses. But knowing techie stuff and managing people are apples and oranges.

Not being a jerk; just factual. Management skills can only be learned thru experience. Good mentorship will help tremendously; I've had a few excellent superiors that let me fall on my face and then explained what I did wrong. I learned a lot.

That said, I've managed two different help desks and a SysAdmin shop.

One help desk was basically just a call center (6 people) that tried to walk the user verbally thru their issue and if that didn't work, they put in a trouble ticket and the Tech Support folks would go to the user.

The other help desk (14 people) was a sort of consolidated call center AND small PC repair shop. I managed both the "call center" part and the "people that go touch the PC and take it to fix it" people.

It can get complicated. Speaking to my experience, the "little helpdesk" was just managing people, filling out their timecards, evaluating their performance and keeping track of stats.

The second helpdesk was almost more than I could handle in addition to all the responsibilities from the first helpdesk, I also managed the budget for, and authorized replacement parts, interfaced with the OEMs for warranty replacement parts and had to attend every single meeting of department heads and explain (defend) every decsion I made.

I hope you get the job and do well. Even if you fall on your face, the experience you gain will only help you in the future.

Are you ready to manage people? Defend your actions to people twice your age and experience? There's a fine line b/t confidence and arrogance; do you know the difference?

Time teaches us all we need to know about everything we need to know about; unfortunately there's no "instant upload" (ala The Matrix) available.
 
Originally posted by: MichaelD
Happy to hear that your interview went well. Hopefully, tenure and loyalty to the company pay off for you. You've been there quite awhile, worked your way up and even have a "position related degree." Sometimes that piece of paper is the deciding factor in who gets the management position.

As has been said, managing people is a whole different ball of wax. You may know everything there is to know about PCs, Active Directory and the switches and routers your company uses. But knowing techie stuff and managing people are apples and oranges.

Not being a jerk; just factual. Management skills can only be learned thru experience. Good mentorship will help tremendously; I've had a few excellent superiors that let me fall on my face and then explained what I did wrong. I learned a lot.

That said, I've managed two different help desks and a SysAdmin shop.

One help desk was basically just a call center (6 people) that tried to walk the user verbally thru their issue and if that didn't work, they put in a trouble ticket and the Tech Support folks would go to the user.

The other help desk (14 people) was a sort of consolidated call center AND small PC repair shop. I managed both the "call center" part and the "people that go touch the PC and take it to fix it" people.

It can get complicated. Speaking to my experience, the "little helpdesk" was just managing people, filling out their timecards, evaluating their performance and keeping track of stats.

The second helpdesk was almost more than I could handle in addition to all the responsibilities from the first helpdesk, I also managed the budget for, and authorized replacement parts, interfaced with the OEMs for warranty replacement parts and had to attend every single meeting of department heads and explain (defend) every decsion I made.

I hope you get the job and do well. Even if you fall on your face, the experience you gain will only help you in the future.

Are you ready to manage people? Defend your actions to people twice your age and experience? There's a fine line b/t confidence and arrogance; do you know the difference?

Time teaches us all we need to know about everything we need to know about; unfortunately there's no "instant upload" (ala The Matrix) available.
Click to expand...

Heh. I was in management for about 3 years for this company, so I have some experience in management, just not this type of management (where these people actually make real money and this is their career).

And yeah, I was telling people what to do when I was 19, I did not like it when it came to people a lot older than me, but got used to it.

That being said, I'm still hoping for a position where I can work remote like I currently do. I only work 4 days a week right now and its out of home, so giving this gig up will be a tough decision.
 
I actually update my posts when it comes to posts like this. However, it is highly likely no one cares. Bump anyway.
 
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