Hands on Japan

How do you think to start Desktop Support for your first career of IT Infrastructure Engineer in Japan?

Recently, the demand of IT infrastructure Engineer has been dramatically increasing because of the technical trend of cloud and virtualization in IT.

In Japan, as a starting point of the career development of IT Infrastructure Engineer, many junior people who are from abroad have chosen “Desktop Support Engineer” and they have actually been succeeding to expand their opportunities by working for the position.

What is the desktop support?

There is the wide range of definition and role for Desktop Support Engineer and the basic role is as bellow.

• Onsite and Remote support for back office area (PC’s, Mac’s, Printers, Video Conference, some position including basic Server, Network)
• Hardware and software troubleshooting
• Installation (Setup / Kitting) of OS, Software
• Deployment of Hardware and Software
• Escalating to appropriate IT groups for problem resolution
• Research of technical solutions
• Asset tracking and disposal
• Remote access support
• Documentation of support issues and maintenance of Knowledge Base
• Liaise with vendors regarding product issues

The reason why this position is effective to develop your career as an IT infrastructure Engineer is because;

• As can been seen above the role, there is much opportunity to deal with several types of IT infra environments even 1^st level so you can learn not only desktop but also Server, Network, Virtualizing technology and some deep tech parts of applications you support. For instance, the position you can develop are;

Server Engineer, Network Engineer, Cloud / Virtualization project Solution Engineer, Application Technical Support Engineer, Project Manager for projects of Desktop environment such as replacement and migration PC project. 

• As the positions are dealing with end users and some of users does not have good enough IT literacy or you might sometimes need to make them calm because they tend to be rushing and upset, you also learn great customer support skill which is going to be useful for any positions. Actually some people says that the quality of Japanese customer service is great so, working in such a environment would be good experience for you.  (Japantoday, 2014, https://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/japanese-people-reflect-on-examples-of-excess-customer-service)
• The language requirement toward user support in Japan would be higher than the same position of the other countries because some Japanese customer tend to not be able to speak English even though the organization is multinational company. Therefore, you can improve Japanese language skill like “Keigo” and business behavior to be able to use in any business situation. 
• Comparing with the other Infra positions, the requirement to apply for Desktop Support Engineer position is NOT higher and it is likely to be accepted even though very entry level candidates. 
• You also can prepare by yourself the environment like “your labo” to learn hand-on skill easily than such as Sever and Network’s ones in terms of costs and sides of the equipments.

How do you develop skills for Desktop Support Engineer?

• You can definitely get knowledge in your real job environment while dealing with many trouble shootings and the most critical point is whether you have practical skill and solution to be able to use such a real situation or not. 

• Another effective way is using IT training organized by IT vendors and taking the IT certifies. There are several type of IT certificates provided by some organizations.Windows OS
  – Windows 7, Configuring https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-70-680.aspx
  – Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Administrator https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-70-686.aspx

  PC Hardware, this would be very useful to start learning PC architecture from scratch.
– CompTIA A+   https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/a

Framework for IT support and maintaining IT infrastructure
– ITIL  https://www.axelos.com/best-practice-solutions/itil/what-is-itil

You can also see cloud (Azure), Server (Active Directory, SharePoint) and applications’ (Office 365) training and certificate
from there. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/certification-overview.aspx

How do you find the Deskop Support job targeting Non-Japanese in Japan? 

There are several Desktop Support Job ad from these Job job boards.

Daijob.com 
https://www.daijob.com/en/index.htm
Careercross 
https://www.careercross.com/en/

Gaijinpot
https://jobs.gaijinpot.com

Of course, you can see a lots of job ads for this in LinkedIn as well.

https://www.linkedin.com/uas/login

Useful search words 

It would be better to search on Google or Indeed by using these words.

“Desktop Support”

“job”

“デスクトップサポート”

“転職”(means job searching)

“IT Helpdesk,”

“ITヘルプデスク”

“社内SE”  or ”社内情報システム”　This means the position regarding internal IT systems administrator in Japanese

The location to look for job

There are actually a lot of job opportunities in central Tokyo but some companies have started to built the 1^st line call center in country side of Japan considering the cost for the office and staffs.

Requirement of Japanese skill

This is depending on the environment but, even foreign or Multinational company in Japan, as mentioned before, they tend to require Japanese skill because the majority of the employee are still Japanese although the globalization in Japan has been developing recently.  In my experience, if you get at least JLPT2 (Japanese – Language Proficiency Test) , you would be able to have wide range of job opportunities in Japan.

JLPT information
http://www.jlpt.jp/e/

How do you think to start Desktop Support as a first career of IT Infrastructure Engineer?