What to do??

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Hello all,

Firstly this is a great forum and have spent the best part of the last couple of weeks on here!

I am looking to get into IT in a desktop support type role, here is my current situation:

I work for a large organisation within the IT department as an Information Officer. I support the external website content, the intranet and have recently got into building and delivering basic SharePoint sites for various business processes. The job consists of two areas - working with the business areas on preparing and editing content for the website and supporting the administration of the website to a devolved user base.

I don't really enjoy the content editing side of things and writing/editing web pages, but I really enjoy the support side of things - solving users problems, setting permissions, building SharePoint web sites etc

I have had a go on the service desk (because I asked) to get an idea of how AD, group policy, exchange, call logging etc works. I mentioned to my boss that I might ask for a permanent transfer to the service desk to build on support skills and he thinks i'm crazy and says its a step down to 'just answer the phone all day'

I have my ITIL v3 Foundation cert, but that is it - I could probably get my A+ in two or three months as I already know quite a bit (looking at the practise questions)

Ideally I want to move into a desktop support role but not sure the best way to achieve this.

And the timing is not great - Im 33 and my wife is expecting our first.

 

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I think you should go and get the A+ to start off with, it may be basic for you as like you have said you already know quite a bit but is always worth having the cert on your CV. After that, you could then go down the route or Microsoft Certs, maybe focusing on Sharepoint or configuring/deploying windows through the MCITP for Windows 7.

 

Theres decent money in sharepoint development, you'd be crazy to spend any time on helpdesk if expecting your first child.

My advice learn C#, SQL, JQuery, MVC 4, Razor, and become a sharepoint dev.

If you have zero development experience this will likely be quite tough and take you a couple years, but your career prospects would certainly be good. However as mentioned you may not enjoy the stress of the job.

 

I know nothing about SharePoint development, all I have done is knocked up a few workspaces for business areas to work collaboratively - a sub part of my main job that I got into by accident.

 

Not interested in learning it at all ?

 

Thanks for the reply dmarsh - I appreciate your time.

I don't think I'm clever enough to learn all those technologies unfortunately. I think I would prefer more of a hardware/operating system support role.

 

Well you'll never find out unless you try, but granted its not for everyone.

 

Thanks guys. Yes I have only touched the very basics of SharePoint, and not the development side of things but front end configuration. I think I will continue with this at work and get as much from it as possible, and study for the A+ over the next few months and then look at doing the Microsoft Certs for Windows 7 Config/support. Hopefully this will provide me a reasonable CV for a desktop technician role.