My New Fictional Hire, An Entry-Level Technician

July 26th, 2009

... or the one about how Aryc should know some of this stuff.

My friend Eric asked me to write up a list of skills that I thought I an entry level tech should have. I’m writing it from the point of just having hired said entry-level technician position. The “guy” I just hired has the following skills, and I am VERY happy with him:

  • Basic knowledge of DNS, how to add/change/delete A/CNAME/RREF records in a generic point and click environment like Windows DNS or a DNS appliance
  • Knowledge of DHCP, leases, static DHCP, adding/change/delete leases
  • Basic DOS/*nix command line navigation (cd, type, less/more, etc.)
  • OS installation, install all drivers, patch system
  • Basic virtual machine knowledge, installing OSs inside VMs, cloning VMs, re-IP & re-SID clones, etc.
  • Disk drive imaging like ghost
  • Network connection troubleshooting knowledge, finding whether problem is local to PC, segment, etc.
  • IP subnetting
  • Basic Office suite use
  • Printer Drivers (enhanced vs os-built in)
  • Identifying unknown hardware by reading device IDs, using www.pcidatabase.com or search engine
  • Web Browser issues/compatability

That’s it for now — but I’m about to get in the truck for the seven hour drive back to Cincinnati from St. Louis. I may edit this post an add to it when I return, or not. Good luck Aryc!