- Donald E. Hester
How to be an Awesome IT Guy or Gal
How to be an Awesome IT Guy or Gal
Anyone can get some certifications and be a great systems admin or developer but what does it take to excel beyond the ordinary. Some may say it is certifications; other might suggest experience; others might even say degrees. Certainly, those are all important but what will help you excel beyond everyone else?
SNL Nick Burns Company Computer Guy
The best thing you can do to be an awesome IT guy or gal is to solve end user problems. Better yet solve problems they are not aware they have. To do this, you are going to have to spend some time with end users and possible learn how they do what they do.
Sometimes this can be done by education end users on how to use the technology they already user to be more efficient. For example, some students might manually enter endnotes or footnotes in Microsoft Word. Demonstrating for them how to you the footnotes or Citations & Bibliography tools in Word would help them save time and energy in making those tedious endnotes and footnotes. Helping users this way only requires that we know how the technology or software works and passing that knowledge on to the user so they can now be more productive and knowing how the end user is doing the task now.
Other potential problems that a user might have may require you to match the right technology or software to the task the users perform. You need to know what they want the end product or what the process is. Then you need to know the available technologies or tools that will fit into their process or help them create the end product. For you to be able to do that, you need to know what the goals are for your end users and the current process. This means you need to talk to them about how they do what they do.
You will also need to know about other solutions or be able to research solutions and contact vendors to see if their solution will be meet the needs of your end users.
And the final most important thing is to be proactive, don’t wait for the end user to come to you. You need to go to them. They don’t know they have a problem, they have figured out a way to get by with what little they know. Here is where all your experience, certifications, and expertise come in. You should see your role as that of a solution provider.
Let me break it down for you:
Talk to your users
Understand their needs
Understand the possible solutions
Be proactive, don’t wait for users to come to you
It wouldn’t hurt to follow-up as well!
Doing these things will be more difficult than the typical IT Admin job but saving people time and money will help you become an awesome IT guy or gal!
Whatever you do, don’t be a Nick Burns!
