Desktop Support Diploma

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D-Rocks

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Hey everyone,
Can you get any decent jobs in a Desktop support with a diploma or do you really need to get a AAS Degree?
 
It depends on desk support for who.. in other words, yes you can but experience will obviously help land the job like if you can prove you have that experience in a shop or something similar. Someone with loads of pc building and troubleshooting would do better than someone with an AS or AAS with none. I see ads in the local papers, some require a degree, some don't.

A good thing to do if you are interested in desktop support would be get your A+ certification, with the Depot Technician concentration. The A+ has been recently updated from this link, but that is the concentration that I was talking about.
 
You can make a decent living, but unless you want to make 30-40k a year for the rest of your life you will have to move into other positions within the company. THings like a team leader and moving into server support will get you jobs that can net 70+ a year.
 
As Lex says, it all depends on what you want to do. But as for your question about the Depot Technician, you pass the A+ Essentials, and then the Depot Technician exam and that is it. Two exams. But also as Lex said, if you want to move on there are a number of ways, but the A+ is a good start.
 
I would suggest doing the IT technician path on the A+ IMO. It is the most rounded of the three options and allows you to have credentials in both hands on experience as well as general troubleshooting VIA phone.

With anything in the IT field it is about experience. It seems from my research and job searching that Desktop Support and Help Desk support is the first level of support. After you work in that field for a few years and get training / experience you can move into more of an analyst position which is more focused on how the help desk support job is run, at that point you can go into server support, which kind of mixes hardware support, software support, and the heirarchy of how everything fits together in the server with regards to the office(s) you are supporting. After that you can go into system admin role, which is really the architecure role of a server support or support team.

That is GENERALLY the career path from a help desk position, obviously every company has a different career path and that should definately be one of the first questions you ask before getting into a position (as there would be no movement if there is no career path).

So you are looking at starting around 25 to 35 thousand a year for a held desk job depending on the market and company. Once you get into a system admin position you are looking at 125 thousand or more a year depending on market and experience.
 
There are a lot more paths at this point in time. Microsoft is now trying to go the route of MCTS or MCITP, which is a lot more specialized certification path. Before you either had an MCP, MCSA, or MCSE (i know there are more but these generally were the large ones). Now Microsoft is specializing the certificaitons so that you can have an MCTS in desktop OS, server OS, development, etc. Then you tie more than one MCTS together and certain combinations give you an MCITP.
 
You could get a MCDST as well. Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician. Not as good as a MCSE or MCSA but still decent. Would get you above the $40K per year mark.
 
Experience counts for more than anything else, really.

If I were you, I'd just whore myself out on craigslist until I had some experience and then go to a staffing agency.

EDIT: OR you could go somewhere like New Horizons because they will teach you and place you. HOWEVER!!!!! Do NOT get suckered into paying for the full course! ONLY take A+ and Net+ because whatever company you go with will pay for the rest of your training!!!
 
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