100 things every IT Technician should know how to do/explain

[Ephelyon]

For my tuppence worth, lots of good stuff. What @Andrew_C has said in particular is spot on!

 

I like the points here from an individual perspective, but maybe a "whole team" perspective is important as well?

 

The problem is that IT is an umbrella field; in terms of how we employ IT staff, it's meant for specialism. In this sector we have little recourse for that (partly because we've never been very good at getting the message across), so whoever you get in a Technician role - or indeed an NM role or higher! - will have somewhat of a "mixed bag" of skills. Where you have a need to employ generalists the key is to find the skillsets that best interlock to create a dynamic team, if you're lucky enough to have one at all. You may have people who specialise (or "have the most experience") in Networking, System Administration, Support, Web, Hardware, Databases, Storage, etc... and all of those areas can be broken down several times for sub-specialisms as well. Support is a very common background as it's a typical route into the sector, as long as we remember that's only part of the game.

 

It may be worth doing a radar chart for yourself of the many areas of IT and how your own skillset could be depicted there. It's a good tactic for schools to use when they are making several appointments at once within a team, or creating a new team from scratch where a mixed bag of skills can be expected. You list the major skill areas (as they pertain to your needs) around the outside and then you have the candidates draw an arrow shape as close or far from it as would depict their skills/confidence in that area. But the key is, you get them to do it on tracing paper and you prepare a blank one in advance, so at the end of the interview process you can overlay them all in different combinations to get a very visual picture of how well-equipped such a team might be to support the school's needs (though of course I'd never suggest this as the sole means of candidate selection). You can repeat the process for annual CPD reviews too (because we all get those), to identify both how a team has developed and where it needs further development now.

 

At the end of the day, we're all going to have our own different experiences and skillsets... to an extent it's all by-the-by. What's important is that the team providing the service is well-proportioned for what it's expected to deliver.

[Dos_Box]

At least 10 keyboard shortcuts. Whether it's tabbing through open apps, cutting\copying and pasting, locking a PC or closing a program the scope is huge.

[TechMonkey]

Ouch, it took my brain a full 30sec to remember what CSMA/CA stood for. Why would someone be that cruel at interview?

 

He he he, bit of a lot of things. Not knowing wouldn't instantly knock you out of the running but put together with other evidence it could go to show you are over qualified so lead to asking the question why this job or that you only have a veneer of knowledge so we would ask more about how good at learning and picking up things you were. Our written test was almost a psychology assessment, not a get a 100% & you are assured the job type exam, but an insight into your knowledge, thoughts, methods and a hand to ask further questions.

 

If you really want mean you should have seen my Data Manager excel practical test. Ohhh that was mean but very, very illuminating.

[GREED]

Simple. 60% of your queries will be covered with one of the following three answers:

 

Is it switched on (or charged up, in this fancy new world of mobile devices!?

Does it belong to the school? No? Then bugger off...

Your DVD player isn't working, again... how about trying to teach your kids something instead of skiving?

 

The rest... meh... listen to the posts above

[X-13]

Your DVD player isn't working, again... how about trying to teach your kids something instead of skiving?

 

If only I could get away with saying that...