IT Employment

Most help desk positions are entry level. They are looking for individuals who can follow a scripted series of questions, properly record the results, and respond with scripted directions. In short, knowing the answer is not required. Personality (friendly, courteous, and empathatic) on the phone is the important trait.

Tech support is typically the position requiring the more advanced technical skills. Often the tech support candidate faces a "peer" interview where current tech support workers do the assessment of the technical skills. My experience has been that these interviews are more an opportunity for the peers to display their own expertise. The secret here is to keep in mind they are assessing more how you impact their own security and prestige. Be open to their comments, don't threaten their knowledge with your own expertise, and present yourself as hoping to learn from them and you win allies. By all means express your analysis of a technical issue, but don't overdefend it if they disagree. No one wants to hire their replacement in the social order.

I would suggest asking some high level questions and see how they think. For example say that a customer calls and can not print, what would you ask them and do some role playing. It shows their thought process and their ability to communicate and follow a logical path. In many cases there are no right or wrong answers to these, but how they go about asking questions that make sense tell you alot. Also questions about: Dial up problems; VPN connectivity; laptop/desktop won't boot; virus warning; outlook high level theory questions (like giving access to someone else's folders, etc). I believe that asking a question that only has one answer may be missing the boat on the overall person.

Hope that helps!
dpo