A desktop Support professional maintains computer hardware and software systems in an organization. They provide technical support, manage updates and install systems into the desktops for an organization. This role requires a background in Information Technology. The role requires a minimum of a degree in Computer Science or a related field. Some specific organizations may require additional professional certifications.
Here are the top twenty questions you should expect to encounter in an interview.
1. Why Are You Interested In This Role?
The interviewer wants to know why you made the application. Share your motivation for this while showing your interest in the role.
“I love working with computers, network systems, and people and this role provides all these opportunities in one. Through this role, I will be able to increase my technical skills while developing my interpersonal skills. In addition, the culture of this organization places it as a top employer in the tech industry. The highlights of the job description make me a great fit for the role. I have been looking for an opportunity to work with this organization. I believe that this opportunity will help me realize both my career and professional goals faster. I would love to be part of a progressive organization such as this in the tech arena.”
2. What Are The Roles Of Desktop Support?
The interviewer seeks to understand if you know the role you will play if selected. Keep your answer in line with the roles and responsibilities outlined in the job description.
“As a Desktop Support, I expect to assist my colleagues set up their workspaces. I will also be involved in troubleshooting technical issues. I will install and maintain software and equipment. I will ask the users questions to pinpoint challenges they are facing and come up with solutions for them. I will also maintain and upgrade equipment and software as needed. I will also handle issues as they arise from the users to ensure the organization runs smoothly.”
3. What Are The Qualities That A Desktop Support Need To Be Successful?
The interviewer wants you to share the desirable qualities for this role. Share what qualities you will need to perform well in this role.
“To be successful in this role, you will need a combination of technical and soft skills. Apart from having a background in Information Technology, you will need strong communication skills. This role involves interaction with people therefore communication skills come in handy to help you resolve their issues with ease. You will need great problem-solving skills as you will be the go-to person in terms of technical issues. Patience is also a great quality to have as some users may be upset with the challenges they are facing and unleash all their frustrations on you. You should be great at multi-tasking as you may need to resolve several issues at the same time.”
4. What Major Challenges Did You Face During Your Last Role? How Did You Manage Them?
This role has unique challenges as it involves the interaction of technology and people. Share a challenge and how you managed it.
“In my last role, I was handling a team of twenty-six staff members. Each of them wanted to control their computer. As a result, they would run some updates that would affect the speed of their machines. It was my task to explain to them why they should let Desktop Support handle any updates to their machines to ensure efficiency. It took time for each member of staff to understand this. Eventually, work became easy as we would monitor and control the updates that were run in the machines.”
5. Describe Your Daily Routine As A Desktop Support?
The interviewer wants to test your planning and organizational skills. Share how you will structure your day for optimum results.
“When I arrive for work in the morning, I will follow up on any unresolved issues of the previous day. I will also handle requests as they come in within the shortest time if possible. I will do a review of support requests raised and schedule resolving them based on urgency and technicality. I will also schedule any service appointments necessary. At the end of the day, I expect to run back-ups for the system so that operations do not get affected when the systems crash as we can easily run the back-ups.”
6. Describe Briefly About Your Experience
The interviewer is interested to know if your experience matches what they are looking for. Share the skills developed in the process while referring to the job description for this role.
“I have two years of experience working at Kentin University serving a population of 5000 students. Here, I was tasked with assisting the students with their online registration queries. I would also set for them the Wi-Fi Passwords on their phones and computers. I would assist students using the computer labs on any issue they may encounter while operating the computers. I would assist technology students in their projects too. Through this experience, I have developed great customer care, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills. With this background, I believe I will be a great addition to the team.”
7. What Kind Of Strategies And Mindset Is Required For This Role?
To succeed in this role, you have to have the correct mindset and strategies. Share how you will work on this.
“I will be required to be a great problem solver. This role requires someone willing and able to ensure problems get solutions within the least time possible. This way there are no disruptions in the operations. You also need to have a patient attitude as the role may test your patience every time. Strategically, you need to know how to prioritize your work and ensure every task is handled to the maximum satisfaction of the end-user. The role requires that you demonstrate confidence in your skills to earn the credibility of the users. You therefore should be developing your skills through learning continuously.”
8. What Is The Biggest Challenge That You Foresee In This Job?
Starting a new role will present its challenges to you. Address a challenge you foresee and how you will handle it.
“I expect a challenge in handling support for online students because of privacy and security issues. The world is changing and most programs can now be easily accessed on online platforms. The students will need remote assistance in handling their online portals. Verifying the account details may pause challenges before granting them access. To handle this, I plan to learn a lot in my first weeks about how to ensure you are dealing with the correct student when it comes to resetting their system access rights. I will focus on identification procedures to prevent any malicious attacks.”
9. How Do You Stay Motivated In Your Work?
Motivating yourself is key to ensuring you continue delivering results. Share what keeps you going despite facing challenges in your day-to-day work.
“To stay motivated, I plan my goals well and strive every day to do something to push me closer to them. I also do a lot of self-talk in my daily activities to keep my momentum going. When I achieve any milestone however small I ensure to celebrate in my little way. I also invest in learning new things and ideas daily. This way I get a chance to acquire more skills making my work easier in the long run. I also derive motivation from seeing the users get satisfied with the support offered. Close collaboration with team members also motivates me. I get to learn a lot from the team members in the process of collaborating on various issues.”
10. Describe A Time When You Failed In This Role And The Lesson You Learnt?
The interviewer wants to establish if you gained valuable lessons from your failures. Share a failure you have encountered and the lessons learned in the process.
“In my previous role, I encountered similar requests and failed to record them all down. I did not handle all of them but I thought I had finished all. As a result, the whole system was frustrated and it became an emergency issue dealing with them. From this, I learned that it is good to record each request such that you can indicate when the task is completed. This has made my work easier since no request is left out. Each is tracked to completion and therefore increases customer satisfaction.”
11. Why Do You Feel You Are The Most Suited For This Role?
This role will attract several suitable candidates. Show the interviewer that you are above the competition by highlighting your uniqueness. Demonstrate how you will be able to fit in this role effortlessly.
“Based on the job description, my knowledge skills and qualifications make me the best candidate. I have three years of experience working in a similar institution of higher learning where I assisted both students and lecturers with their technology issues. I see this opportunity as an extension of my work from my previous role. I am passionate about great customer experience and problem-solving. These are attributes listed in the job description. Therefore, I believe I’m the best-qualified candidate to handle this role.”
12. Share With Us Your Greatest Achievement.
The interviewer wants to know if you have career moments that you are proud of. This question will assess your ability to deliver results.
“In my last role, I managed to be the one with the highest percentage of resolved issues. When issues would be reported to me I would ensure that I work at resolving them in the minimum time possible. I would record the issue and update with the action taken and the date completed. It was easy for me to track the tasks this way. The students and staff members appreciated my efforts on this and recommended me for the annual shopping voucher for the most supportive officer in the Information Technology department.”
13. How Do You Recover Data From A System Affected By A Virus?
In your line of work, you are likely to encounter viruses. Explain to the interviewer what you will do if faced with this situation.
“To recover data from an infected system, you will need to install a hard disk with the latest version of anti-virus software. Connect the infected hard disk as a secondary drive before starting the system. You then run the antivirus to scan and clean the infected hard drive. Then transfer the data to the new disk.”
14. What Do You Understand By The Term RAS Server?
The interviewer wants to test your knowledge of technical terms in IT. Share what you know.
“The term stands for Remote Access Server. It is normally used by mobile users on a server. It allows operating a tool such as a printer using a combination of hardware and software tools. The connectivity is made possible through a telephone line. It can also be used to connect two or more offices.”
15. Explain What VPN Stands For.
This is another question used to test your technical knowledge. Explain what a VPN is to the interviewer. Demonstrate how it is used in the workplace.
“VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is used by companies to manage private confidential communication over a public network. An example is the internal emails run by a company.”
16. When Using Ms Outlook, How Do You Backup Emails?
This is another technical question. It may be part of your day-to-day duties. Explain to the interviewer how you will do the backup.
“You go to the control panel, then under the data file open the mail file. Once it’s open copy them and paste wherever you want to store your back up.”
17. In Your Work, Do You Have Experience With Google Workspace?
The interviewer is interested to know if you have used new technology tools in managing your work. Share your experience of Google Workspaces by giving an example.
“Yes, I do. Google workspace provides a platform for collaboration between teams. I have experience with google sheets in my previous role where we had one sheet to track all the requests made. When you open the sheet you would see all requests made and their status. This made it easy when a member of staff misses work as the people available would know how far the request had been handled. They can then finish it up and close it.”
18. Have You Ever Set Up A Zoom Meeting?
The interviewer wants to understand your experience with the latest technological trends. Share your experience with zoom meetings.
“Yes, I have set up zoom meetings frequently over the past year. As a result of work from home orders, I played a key part in assisting lecturers set up zoom classes for the students. This gave me a great platform to manage the virtual classes.”
19. What Do You Do To Resolve A Complain Of A Slow Computer?
The interviewer is assessing your knowledge on technical issues. Share the process you will take to resolve this complaint.
“A slow computer could be caused by insufficient memory. I will start by trying to free up additional memory for the user. I will remove any temporary files from the Windows folder. I will also ask the user to delete any unused files taking up valuable space in the hard disk. I will also delete the cache from the browser if the user complains of slow internet speeds. As a last resort, I will consider installing additional RAM or upgrading the operating system altogether.”
20. Have You Ever Encountered A Difficult User? What Did You Do?
This question will test your patience and ability to listen to a user however unfriendly or angry they are. Demonstrate the greatest levels of customer service while answering this question.
“In my previous role, one of the users had recurring issues with a printer in his office. When I reached out to resolve the issue, the user unloaded his frustrations on me. I listened to him without interrupting. When he was finished talking, I assured him that I was going to find a lasting solution to his problem. When looking into the issue I discovered that it was a conflict in The IP address that was affecting his printer. I configured it correctly and explained to the client what the challenge was. He appreciated the help and was calm after I fixed his printer issues.”
Conclusion
In the interview, you will likely meet both technical and general questions. Prepare well and focus on the needs of the organization as highlighted by the roles and responsibilities in the job description. Review these 20 questions and you will be on your way to a rewarding IT career.
