itSMFI 2016 Forum Focus - December Forum Focus ITSMFIV3 | Page 20

In my years as an IT Professional I've come to know a few things about the attributes of
an exceptional IT professional. As a matter of fact, my entire career has been an
exercise in becoming and/or developing the exceptional IT professional.
What I'd like to do here is to share a bit of what I truly believe makes one into the
exceptional IT Pro. While there are many contributing attributes, I have time and time
again used these 3 attributes as the gauge by which I judge a potential job candidate,
mentee or subordinate.
The 3 attributes are;
1. Customer Service skills
2. Resourcefulness
3. Technical Knowledge and Ability the number 1 most important thing as he begins his list. Most
techie folks won’t immediately understand my thought process
here. But I cannot stress enough how important customer
service skills are for IT professionals.
So, let's say you are applying for an IT position where I am the
hiring manager. You've been screened for technical
competencies and otherwise. Now I've invited you into the office
for a person to person interview. After exchanging pleasantries,
we settle in for the interview and I say to you, "Please rank the
following 3 attributes by importance with 1 being the most
important. The attributes are Technical knowledge/skill/ability,
Resourcefulness and Customer service." Many times in deskside support and site support, the local IT
professional is the face of the IT organization. It does not matter
to the customer how many dozens of IT professionals there are
back in the server room at headquarters huddled into any
number of networking, apps development and infrastructure
groups. It doesn’t matter to the customer about internal OLAs
and bureaucracy. None of that matters to the customer. What
matters to the customer is that you are there to service their
needs in the most efficient and understanding way possible. The
customer wants to get the technical issue resolved ASAP and
they want to feel good about it when it is all said and done.
Customer Service
Admittedly, I already have one foot out the door mentally if the
interviewee starts with anything other than Customer Service as
20 itSMFI Forum Focus—December 2016
It's not simply enough to know your way around active