Career advice please

[grayson]

Ive been a builder for almost 15 years Im 36 and Ive decided to go for a career change, Im sick of working out in all weather and getting up at the crack of dawn.

Ive been interested in computers most of my life, Ive built 2 computers and whenever something goes wrong with my family and friends computers 9 times out of 10 I fix them.
Im currently doing a Comptia A+ coarse and have had 3 tests scoring no lower than 80 percent. I went for an interview on wednesday for a telephone Pc technical support job, I passed the apptitude test so the next step was the interview which I think I failed.

The questions were about problem solving and how i would react to different situations. can anyone give me any tips or any sites where I can learn. Thanks :(

[deddard]

Were the questions about specific problems or just generalisations?
If you have specific problems there are a couple of points - first, you either know the solution or you don't - this doesn't mean you can jump up and say 'do XYZ' but you need to be able to find the route to the problem. If you can't solve a problem, you need to pass it up the line, assuming there are others to pass it to.
Secondly, which is true for all problems is follow the KISS principles (Keep IT Simple, Stupid) - assume that the user knows nothing, and start everything simply and from the beginning.
I helped someone yesterday who complained that Norton firewall was throwing up some error messages, and since then he couldn't access the Internet.
On examination, there were a couple of problems being thrown up by Norton Windoctor, (missing utilitiy files) but rather than jump in here, I went through the usual network procedure - check the connections and ping the interface etc etc. - the problem was that the cable had come unplugged.
Rather than chase down what these two files were (they were nothing to do with the problem) I started with the basics, and this saves so much time on the vast majority of problems.

One of the best ways you can learn how to adapt to different problems is to browse this forum. pick a particular topic (if they gave you a specific problem s at the interview, pick one of these) and do a search. look through the posts and follow the procedures people went through to solve them, It can be extremely illuminating to follow thigns through like this - time saving and advanced tips come up all the time.

[grayson]

No specific problems just generalisations, Ive been a robot working for the same company for 15 years my brains a bit rusty. :)