Help! Need Advice Getting Started

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I am looking for an entry level help desk job but it is not going too well at the moment. I do have an MCDST and an MCSA but I do not have the work experience that seems to be at least as equally important as qualifications to many employers.

I know I need to be doing something to help myself out and I would like to know where I should be looking for voluntary work in order to get some day to day experience.

Having finally got some qualifications it is annoying to realise that you need experience as well. But that is reality I suppose!
I am just looking to be actually working doing something which puts what I have learnt to use and at the moment I am not bothered if it is paid or not.

I would like to know if anyone has any advice for me in looking for an entry level job as well as where I should be looking to get some useful work experience.

Thanks for your help.

 

Do you have any customer facing experience you can highlight on your CV?

Employers look for customer focus, teamwork, business awareness, working to SLAs (service level agreements) and other non technical skills that enable you to 'get the job done'.

You may have all this already but not be 'selling it' in your CV.

I've written a section of my site about this very dilemma so many people have:

http://www.first-computer-job.com/it-work-experience.html

PM me if you have any questions.

 

Excellent advice Pete, well done

 

Thanks to Sparky and Pete01 for your advice.
I suppose it is just a matter of keeping on looking anywhere and everywhere as well as always looking for things to improve on.

Obviously if what I am doing isn't getting any results then I need to change it. I will have to look again at my CV and make sure it is helping me as much as it should be.

What I suppose I would like to know is what sort of businesses I should be trying to get work in. Are there particular types of businesses that always seem to be looking for help desk and related assistance?

Thanks again.

 

<Most> agencies will dress your CV up for you for free- it is in their interest to find you work.

Good luck with the job hunting.

oh, out of interest, how far are you looking for work?

Si

 

keep at it, i need the same kind of job and am applying like mad

 

Good luck with the jobhunting - I'm actually looking myself at the moment as well.

I find it's better to really cherry pick the jobs that interest you rather than mass mailing generic CV's out to loads of jobs. Focusing on the ones that really appeal to me makes it easier to tweak my CV and target it towards the specific roles.

Another thing to do if you get to any kind of interview stage is to research the company. I had a telephone interview yesterday which all went fine until the guy asked me what I knew about the copmpany. When It became apparent that I hadn't taken the time to really research the company website the guy lost interest almost immediately. It seemed that it was very important to him that candidates were genuinely very interested in that particular role for that particular company.

So my jobhunting time is spent searching for roles that I really want to do and targeting my CV/cover letter to individual roles. A bit of a hassle I know but so far out of 6 applications I've got 4 call backs and 2 interviews (including the telephone interview yesterday).

I know for first jobs the roles will be more generic helpdesky type of things so the above won't apply so much but I think the cherry picking and CV targeting will help anyway.

Remember to really highlight the non technical skills like:

Team player, quick to learn, able to think on your feet, client facing etc.

In the cover note or email to the agent with the initial CV put in a point about being 'very excited at the prospect of working for such and such type of company'.

I'll keep you updated on my progress