In exchange for their expertise, help desk associates earn an average annual salary of $38,601. The minimum education requirement to start a career as a help desk associate is a high school diploma, but advanced roles require a bachelor's degree in disciplines such as computer science or other related fields. The necessary top skills for a help desk associate are the ability to provide satisfactory customer services and technical support and to make follow-up calls to clients. Help desk associates look for new ways to improve and help troubleshoot general software, internet connectivity, and login problems. They also need solid report writing skills.
In general, a help desk associate gives technical support and assistance to customers, ensuring customer satisfaction and efficiency. These services can be provided through face-to-face communication or calls. The duties of help desk associates include discussing product specifications, answering inquiries, troubleshooting problems, recommending services, coordinating with other staffs in filling and organizing documents, and maintaining records in line with company's regulations and policies.
How to Become a Help Desk Associate
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a help desk associate. For example, did you know that they make an average of $21.8 an hour? That's $45,334 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 10% and produce 83,100 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Help Desk Associate Do
There are certain skills that many help desk associates have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed customer-service skills, listening skills and speaking skills.
How To Become a Help Desk Associate
If you're interested in becoming a help desk associate, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 49.2% of help desk associates have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 3.8% of help desk associates have master's degrees. Even though most help desk associates have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a help desk associate. When we researched the most common majors for a help desk associate, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on help desk associate resumes include high school diploma degrees or diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a help desk associate. In fact, many help desk associate jobs require experience in a role such as customer service representative. Meanwhile, many help desk associates also have previous career experience in roles such as technical support specialist or sales associate.
Help Desk Associate Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of technical support specialist you might progress to a role such as systems administrator eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title information technology manager.
Average Salary for a Help Desk Associate
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for Help Desk Associates
1. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
2. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. Maine Maritime Academy
Castine, ME • Private
5. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
6. California State University - Bakersfield
Bakersfield, CA • Private
7. SUNY at Binghamton
Vestal, NY • Private
8. Villanova University
Villanova, PA • Private
9. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Private
10. Bentley University
Waltham, MA • Private
Top Skills For a Help Desk Associate
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 19.1% of help desk associates listed customer service on their resume, but soft skills such as customer-service skills and listening skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Help Desk Associate Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Help Desk Associate templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Help Desk Associate resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Help Desk Associate Demographics
Help Desk Associate Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among help desk associates, 34.7% of them are women, while 65.3% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among help desk associates is White, which makes up 59.9% of all help desk associates.
- The most common foreign language among help desk associates is Spanish at 57.4%.
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Best States For a Help Desk Associate
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a help desk associate. The best states for people in this position are Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and Maryland. Help desk associates make the most in Pennsylvania with an average salary of $60,552. Whereas in New York and Delaware, they would average $60,048 and $56,067, respectively. While help desk associates would only make an average of $54,662 in Maryland, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Virginia
$53,791
Avg. Salary
2. New York
$60,048
Avg. Salary
3. Pennsylvania
$60,552
Avg. Salary
How Do Help Desk Associate Rate Their Jobs?
Top Help Desk Associate Employers
Most Common Employers For Help Desk Associate
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JPMorgan Chase & Co. | $106,674 | $51.29 | 13 |
| 2 | Charles Schwab | $94,343 | $45.36 | 6 |
| 3 | AT&T | $91,958 | $44.21 | 6 |
| 4 | DXC Technology | $77,249 | $37.14 | 5 |
| 5 | ManpowerGroup | $76,365 | $36.71 | 7 |
| 6 | First Merchants | $70,598 | $33.94 | 4 |
| 7 | Computer Science Corporation | $52,984 | $25.47 | 6 |
| 8 | Bloomin' Brands | $50,985 | $24.51 | 6 |
| 9 | Modis | $46,369 | $22.29 | 6 |
| 10 | SAIC | $44,932 | $21.60 | 11 |
Help Desk Associate Videos
