Computers are probably the biggest boon of the late twentieth century. But computers are made of electronics and run of software – both of which are not glitch-free. This opens up a great service market to exploit: Technical Support Services.
There are multiple categories of technical support that one can specialize in.
1. Computer Specialists: These typically specialize in fixing problems on the individual computers – desktops and laptops. Common problems that one faces could be a fried hard disk, installation of a new service or software on the PC, taking database backups, regular maintenance, updating anti-virus, retrieving lost passwords etc. This is not restricted to retail or home users, even businesses, regardless of their size, may require such services. Such experts may also provide the technical writing services to develop FAQs and aid company employees to do basic troubleshooting.
2. System Administrators: This category of experts focus on the company’s networks. So typically system admins would work on the LANs of small and medium businesses. On larger scale, teams of network administrators may be involved in the large companies and state departments. Their job is more demanding than mere troubleshooting. They need to plan, deploy and maintain the local area networks within the organization. This can be a tough job as they need to take into consideration the geographical and logical constraints in the building and also make their plan future-proof, in case of expansion. Besides, their designs need to maximum the resource utilization with limited down time and congestion.
3. Security Specialist: As more companies adopt IT and software, there is an increasing threat of the data being jeopardized by security breaches. This stream of specialists focus on thwarting such attempts on the sensitive company information. They need to support a system that is very user friendly to authorized users and is impregnable to outsiders. This is tough combination to maintain can require extra-hours and lot of diligence.
Thus technical support specialists play an important role in today’s networked world. Their contributions are critical for any company to run smoothly. Given the nature of their jobs they may have to work beyond office hours and be ready to provide on-call services too. Do you think you have the knack of getting to the root of the problem and solving them? Do you like to interact with people and take up added responsibilities? Does working in a highly demanding and challenging environment get you excited? Well, then you should consider this career option.
So how do you go about pursuing this career path? Well, most technical support specialists rely on well known certifications to provide credibility to their abilities. Besides certification, a good graduate degree could boost your chances of getting such a job.
Technical support jobs are projected to grow over the next decade at much higher rate than most other jobs. Besides, these can be very well paying jobs too with salaries ranging between 30K and 50K for computer specialists and between 50K and 80K for system administrators. So this is an expanding market with lucrative compensation. If you can cope with its challenges, you should give this career a serious consideration.