What do I need to work at an IT help desk ?

Question

How much knowledge do I need ? will they train me ?

My attraction to the role is that I will get to learn new things and work inside away from the heat.

I am looking for a part time help desk role so I can go to University.

I am in Australia. Any advice ? is this realisitc and achievable ?

Answer 1

I did software support for years but now most is outsourced so few jobs available.
We required degrees since about 1995 before that people just learned on their own.
My degree is in accounting but I supported software and some hardware and operating systems. You need to be a creative thinker since there aren't set answers for most problems.
While working a job the operating systems keep changing so you need to be able to figure things out.
I remember when Windows 95 was in Beta and a customer installed our software on it when we had never seen it. We logged on to his system and the dos prompt was gone. The screen resolution was so we couldn't see the tool bar so no idea how to get to the operating system. We called the customer and he told us what he did and told us there was a tool bar with start at the bottom. It took a long time to get used to it when you are used to DOS or Unix or VMS with a prompt to type commands. I never took any operating system lessons but was an expert in VMS and Unix from learning what I needed to know. Took me a long time to be willing to move files in windows I was afraid they would be deleted or go places I couldn't find them. Now I use windows instead of using the dos prompt to manage files.