Geek Squad?

[Peter.Cort]

i thought about working at geek squad... but then i realized that they eat small children and have no souls.

 

[nu2duo]

Isn't that against our religion? I mean, isn't it going against "techies bible" ideas?
Don't do it!!! You'll be committing a sin! LOL

As far as selling your services to others....well, IMO, it's not as easy as others might say. I give out business cards all the time and well, I'm not rich. But, lots of that extra money that I've made has helped to pay for some of my parts.

Good luck!

 

[Crysalis]

Actually, despite popular belief, they are actually very strict on who they hire. I applied there 2-3 years ago for a tech job. They wanted a minimum of a Bachelors Degree. If you had at least that, then they wanted 2-3 years professional experience. That was just for the basic tech job... nothing spectacular. The higher up positions actually are paid quite well (40-50k a year). For just being a "Geek Squad Tech", thats not too shabby.

I understand many people have had bad experiences, but I have dealt with them twice and both times they were helpful. They weren't able to solve the problems I had, but new exactly what I needed done (ended up being a hard drive going to a Class-10 clean room for data extraction, after 3 "second" opinions).

They do know what they are doing, but how well they do and in what way/attitude is another thing.

 

[Peter.Cort]

As far as selling your services to others....well, IMO, it's not so easy as others might say.

thats not what the nice lady on the street corner said to me...

but yea, if its just a one man job, you're not gonna get a lot of service, except with people around that you know and stuff.

I actually read an article in PC magazine that tested the "best and most favored" customer service people they rated geek squad a 2/5. They rated on 3 problems. A software, hardware and virus issue. The geek squad guy only fixed the virus issue. In addition to that each company they tested was rated on tech proficiency, clarification of instruction, speed, and that they took steps to protect the pc in the future. Geek squad got 3/5 on the tech, 3/5 on clarity, 2/5 on speed, and 1/5 on protecting the pc. Also it took 94 minutes to fix one out of the three problems.
The full article is in the September 20, '05 issue of PC Magazine if you're interested in it.

But so overall what this tells me is that Geek Squad should be a bit more selective on who they employ.

 

[Ronnie]

i know that all the best buys around here require that you have your A+ certification, which isnt too hard to get just expensive
i have friends/classmates that work there and had to get their A+ to get the job

its good money about 12/hour from what they tell me but they ride your *** on everything and its a ****** workplace

i cant stand the geek squad though, to me its a disgrace to techies everywhere

 

[Kharn]

As a interesting side note The Tech guy's are the British equivalent of the Geek Squad, The Tech Guys at PC World - Offering wireless internet installation, computer data transfer and computer repairs.

 

[Jorsoft]

Actually, despite popular belief, they are actually very strict on who they hire. I applied there 2-3 years ago for a tech job. They wanted a minimum of a Bachelors Degree. If you had at least that, then they wanted 2-3 years professional experience. That was just for the basic tech job... nothing spectacular. The higher up positions actually are paid quite well (40-50k a year). For just being a "Geek Squad Tech", thats not too shabby.

True, to work at an actual Geek Squad center, you've got to really know your stuff. But to work at an in-store Best Buy Geeksquad, the standards are much lower. Plus, at least here in MN, they seem to steal all of your porn/music when you drop off your pc. They're not exactly trust worthy...

 

[murdocsvan]

you have to be careful with that sort of self-employed job. what if you wrongly wire someones quad core CPU and it blows? you have to have yourself covered against that sort of thing, because forking that sort of money for a simple mistake isnt fun.

 

[wrestlingnrj]

As a former employee of the Geek Squad I have mixed feelings about that place. First off the managers are complete crap and are usually the ones who make you *steal* money from customers. When I was first hired in everyone in my store (12 members) had an A+ certification, but over the past 6-9 months they have been basically hiring anybody. What they are looking for now and the direction they are trying to move the company in is to have Sales People who also happen to know how to do a minute amount of tech work.
The reason for this is that about 5 months ago they implemented a remote access program known as Agent Jonny Utah, to log in to computers from remote locations (phillipines/india) and fix them from there. So as long as the computer can turn on and it connects to the internet (65% of the comp's we got in) it must be hooked up to AJU. The problem arises when it takes them 4 days to complete a job, that usually isn't ever finished correctly, when it could have taken one person 1 hr to complete.
In my opinion, Geek Squad USED to be a good company and good place to take your computer, but as of recently I would recommend against it. If you want a job there, just take their very simple test and apply online. (God have mercy on your soul though)