Summary Report: Help Desk Internship

Description:

Following my recruitment as an IT Help Desk Intern, I was charged with the responsibility of computer repair and technical assistance. As an Intern, I was expected to work under an advisor who was also my supervisor. My duties had to be approved by the supervisor and all my work had to be inspected afterwards as a company policy. After receiving user complains, I was expected to seek my advisor’s approval to attend to the problem and if the problem was beyond my capacity, I was expected to escalate it to the workshop with the advisor’s approval. My duties were mainly limited to the company’s lab computers. By the second week, my advisor had absolute confidence in my skills and occasionally left me in charge of the lab.

Primary duties:

As a technical assistant intern, my key duties entailed primary care and maintenance of the company’s lab computers. These duties included: switching computers on and off in the morning and evening, ensuring each computers efficient performance, and maintain the lab backups on the server. Once a complaint was launched through the help desk, my task was to quickly assess the problem reported and identify the problem and it possible cause. Once this was done, I had to notify my advisor as well as seek his approval on fixing the problem. Minor problems related to loose connections, damaged cables, driver related issues and non-complex software issues I tackled without the need to escalate. However, for damaged parts, I sort my advisor’s approval to send them to the workshop for repair or replacement.

Strengths and successes:

During my first week at the company, though there was not much to handle, I got orientated on the lab setup, network setup, company software suite, server room setup, my duties, company policies and procedures. My first assignment was to restore a computer whose operating software had crashed. Although this took time, I was able to disinfect the virus threat, reinstall the operating software and reconfigure the computer within five and a half hours. This was a success for me and I got my supervisor’s commendation.

Owing to my expertise in hardware maintenance and previous interaction with various software applications, I was able to earn credits from fellow staff and my supervisor. Throughout the semester as an intern, I was able to attend to and resolve nearly all problems reported to me with a high level of professionalism. Apart from my enthusiasm and interest in computers, my course in computer science particularly played an important role in equipping me with the skills to handle most of these challenges. The particular courses I attribute these successes to are Computer Architecture and Introduction to software engineering.

Challenges experienced:

One of the key challenges I experienced was in week two when I was tasked the responsibility to troubleshoot and repair a computer that was making a continuous beeping sound and the computer could not start. I had not experienced such as noise before and this took me too much time trying to narrow down to the problem. Also, during the third week, several computers developed problems ranging from display issues to sound related issues. Though these problems were fixable without the need to escalate, the task was overwhelming and took an additional hour to my six hour work day. These experiences made