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Hi guys,

We’re in the process of hiring another helpdesk person into my company. I’m going to be moving up to focus on larger projects and this person is essentially absorbing my old role. I’m the only helpdesk person here so I’m constantly running around fixing stuff, handling walk ins, answering the phones etc. I need to know if anyone has any good ideas for interview questions? I just want to be able to help hire someone who is willing to help our end users no matter what, higher ups are putting a lot of pressure on me to choose my next in line, I just want to make sure I get the right person.

Thanks for all your help!

@Google

26 Spice ups
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Ask them STAR/Situational questions: Situation, Task, Action, Resolution. Given it’s helpdesk, I’d focus more on soft skills than tech skills, as tech skills can be achieved with relative ease.

“Give me an example of a time you had to deal with a frustrated User”

“Give me an example where you had to accommodate a difficult user”

Stuff of that sort will show you the personality they have.

“A printer is down for a [insert lower position in company here] and the CEO’s laptop can’t connect to WiFI, how d you handle the situation”

6 Spice ups
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Ask the new hire if they have the same skills that made you a valuable helpdesk person to your company.

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See what they would do if a user called in and said they can’t print.

See what steps they would take to fix the issue.

See if they have basic knowledge of AD.

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I would advise picking someone with a good personality, that fits your companies culture. As long as they are willing to learn, personality is one of the few things that you cannot teach. After that I would not try to stump them with questions on how to do a specific task, just make sure that they know how to Google.

17 Spice ups
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Think of situations you’ve encountered and ask them how they would handle it.

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I agree with SQLRage. I am fairly new to IT work and I doubt that I could have impressed anyone with my answers to many interview questions, but I have strong GoogleFu and I am a quick learner.

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You know the job best because you have been doing it, I would sit down and write down questions that you feel are important to being successful in that role and craft questions based on that.

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Depending on your company/organization, make sure this individual would work well with your end users. For instance: our end users are all human services employees, big difference from supporting a bunch of engineers so therefore the process of helping them differs. Experience comes over time and no matter who you hire they will develop the necessary skills over time. I can relate since I started with my organization 8 months ago and now am in charge of the help desk, where 8 months ago I had no help desk experience at all. I would just make sure that both you and your end users would be able to work well with this individual and that they have a fitting personality and likeability for your company.

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I like to give interviewees a real world problem. Give them a broken printer issue to fix or something routine and see how they preform. It is one thing to the talk to them, it is another to have them apply their resume skills.

When I look for a field tech I have them build and test a patch cable and setup a networking device. I like to see them in action.

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As far as skill set goes, it all depends on your company and your help desk role. You will know these skills best and know which individual seems to have some similar experience. With that in your situational questions try to pry out of them information on past experiences in the IT field.

With that you want someone who can learn, adapt, and is motivated to work. A respectful individual, even if they have a little bit of a front. You will want someone who has experience working in a team. Although some of that is dependent on your department, I believe departments that work as a team are much more productive. You will want someone who holds onto jobs for long periods of time of course because you will not want the hassle of constant retraining taking away from your new line of work.

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Answer: “Which one has candy at their desk, of which they will likely offer me a piece when I resolve their issue? I deal with that one first.”

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My interview for my help desk mainly dealt with do I know how to google things and what bands and movies do I dig.

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When I was interviewed for my current help desk position I was asked how I would handle a user that always blamed the computer of screwing up and was always angry/aggressive about technology.

Also, what’s the pay? Benefits? What’s dress code? What’s the infrastructure like? Are there remote users?

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You also want to get a sense of their thought process. Walk them through a troubleshooting scenario to see if they understand the logic involved in breaking down a problem.

I also have a standard followup to “I don’t know but I’d Google it” I ask them to tell me what search terms they’d use. It gives me a sense of how they think and prevents go to Google as being a cop out answer.

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pffffsh.

If you have to leave your desk to get the candy, you’re doing it wrong.

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SQLRage hit it on the head: personality is actually far more critical than skill here. Is the person cool under fire? Personable? Able to fake sincerity? One of those nutballs that actually is sincere?

Also, are you looking for someone long-term in this position or does your company encourage helpdesk as a stepping stone to other things? This is critical. Long-term definitely puts personality over technical knowledge. You can teach basic troubleshooting and site-specific knowledge to someone with the right soft skills. If you’re looking to leave 'em in helpdesk for a year or two, technical ability will be something to look at over soft skills … as long as you can manage the user pain in the interim.

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You’re going to get LOTS of advice about what questions to ask, so I won’t bother to cover those any more than to tell you to ask about the most common problems in your environment.

What I am going to tell you about is how to interview all your candidates fairly.

  1. Make it a repeatable process.
  • Ask each candidate the exact same questions
  • in the same order,
  • then score their answers when they are given.
  1. Follow up with separate scores for more subjective items
  • First impressions
  • overall appearance
  • eagerness
  • assertiveness
  • calmness
  • ability to communicate clearly

Be sure to score everyone right away! Also, if they do poorly in the interview, tell them so - and why. They may not be your best candidate, but you can help them improve.

3 Spice ups
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I want to second all the people saying how important personality is. I was hired even though I’m very much learning on the fly because my current company cares a lot about the quality of people they hire. They figure that, if nothing else, if you’re a hard worker and good person they can always move you to a new department if you really can’t learn your position. But those are the people who end up adding value you never expected. That being said, of course you have a job that needs to be done at the helpdesk. As long as they are proficient at basic tech problem solving and know how to troubleshoot (Occam’s razor and such), they should be fine at a help desk. My personality and willingness to work hard and learn have already propelled me in about a month to being a proficient tech support person day to day. I love my coworkers and really care about doing the best, most efficient job I can, and ultimately that’s what made me what to learn and keep learning and be the best I can at my job here.

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I think questions that give you insight on how the candidate will deal with uncommon situations and their ability to adapt to different situations will help. Much of the help desk load I get stems from either the end user not clearly explain issues, or from something not working as we intended. So we can spend a decent amount of time troubleshooting just to figure things out. Being able to adapt and deal with uncommon situations are areas I would like to see someone excel as a candidate for a help desk position.