Service Desk Support Specialist

About the job

Brief Description of PSU/School/Dept.

Portland State University (PSU) is a thriving campus of 16,000 students in downtown Portland, easily accessible by bike and public transit and surrounded by restaurants, food carts, parks, and local businesses. PSU is committed to offering opportunities to students from a variety of backgrounds and prides itself on providing access for low-income and nontraditional students. Our motto, “Let knowledge serve the city,” reflects our dedication to finding innovative, sustainable solutions to local and global problems. Our location in the heart of one of America’s most dynamic cities gives our students unmatched access to career connections and an internationally acclaimed cultural scene.

PSU’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) — ranked one of the Best Places to Work in IT for six years — empowers students, faculty, and staff through technology. Our number one value is our employees: we build and foster a culture of inclusion, actively encourage a healthy work-life balance and flexible schedules, as well as strive to support our employees professionally and personally. PSU offers employees a substantial tuition discount and we encourage our staff to take advantage of this, be it for pursuing a degree or for personal interest. We are a department of dynamic, engaged, collaborative, and communicative people, and seek to attract employees who can add to our culture. Refer to our human resource pages to learn more about why we’re a great place to work.

Position Summary

The Service Desk Support Specialist provides direct technical support to the campus community and assists in facilitating smooth and functional operations of the Service Desk team.

A day in your life at work may look like this: In the morning, you’ll check the schedule against any callouts and redistribute some of our student workforce to ensure support locations are covered for the day. Then, you’ll check the Help Desk support queue for new tickets and follow up on any requests you’re already handling. After that, you’ll staff the in-person, phone, and chat queues for a block of time. Along the way, you may gather with a team of people to consult on a particularly difficult customer issue. On some days, you might be the staff member on duty tasked with monitoring Slack, our team’s communication platform, and assisting student agents with handling customer requests and any other logistical things that arise during the day. In the afternoon, you might check on student printers in other campus buildings to ensure that they are functional and filled with paper and toner. After that, you may head to a project meeting for an hour, giving your perspective on the project’s impact to support operations and be assigned tasks to handle before the next project meeting. At the end of the day, you’ll review your existing requests, send out some questions or updates, and know that tomorrow will bring new challenges your way.

The Support Specialist will provide:

Technical Support (30%):

• Provide direct technical support to campus constituents in person
• Staff phone queue, answering incoming support calls
• Active monitoring of ticket queues and proactively addressing issues
• Monitor chat and respond to customer inquiries
• Create, service, and complete help requests in the ticketing system

Escalation Support (30%):

• Act as an escalation point and support for the student team, troubleshooting more advanced technical and customer service issues and facilitating clear escalations to the correct resources.
• Respond to and take ownership of challenging or unusual and escalated technical support requests.
• Foster and maintain relationships between Tier 1 and other units, including information sharing and regular coordination on shared topics and areas of support.
• Guide student employees to address tickets in the queue so that they are resolved promptly.

Team Support (20%):

• Work with the service desk team to support and coordinate our service operations.
• As a team, answer questions, address concerns, and generate support documentation as needed to improve team effectiveness.
• Work with student coordinators and the team lead to build and maintain an effective schedule.
• Participate in performance evaluation and management, providing feedback, coaching, and mentoring to student team members as needed.
• Assist in the creation and maintenance of team dashboards and processes such as QA review.

Team Project and Task Support (15%):

• Contribute to inner-team projects by creating project documentation, setting goals and deadlines, and following up on outstanding action items and deliverables.
• Provide frontline support perspective to project managers, system administrators, and developers as needed.
• Support project team members with tasks and assignments as needed.

Other Duties as Assigned (5%)

Minimum Qualifications

This classification requires a basic foundation of knowledge and skills of technology and information systems generally obtained through an AA degree in computer science, information systems, educational technology, communications, or related fields, or similar certified course work in applicable fields of study and at least one year of related work experience.

A successful candidate will have experience and knowledge in all of the following:

• Experience working in a collaborative, technical, team-oriented environment.
• Experience providing customer service/support.
• Ability to communicate with both technical and non-technical customers with diverse perspectives and backgrounds.
• Experience with Mac and/or PC operating systems.
• Familiarity with common computing hardware, such as desktops, laptops, and smartphones.

Preferred Qualifications

A successful candidate will have experience and knowledge in some of the following:

• Experience writing procedures or technical documentation.
• Familiarity with printers, copiers, or other office equipment.
• Experience with ticketing systems or other request-tracking tools.
• Basic knowledge of networking concepts and troubleshooting.
• Experience working in an IT support role.

We ask our employees and applicants (that’s you!) to align with our OIT Attributes for Success:

• Coaching: you appropriately give, accept, and incorporate feedback from others.
• Communication: you exchange information and ideas well, verbally and in writing; communication is an essential tool for productivity and strong working relationships in OIT.
• Emotional Intelligence: you possess the capacity to be aware of, manage, and express your emotions; you handle interpersonal relationships with empathy and safety, enabling diverse types of people to work together.
• Proactive: you recognize and initiate opportunities to take action and prevent potential problems or threats.
• Teamwork: you identify with the larger organizational team and your role within it; you share resources, respond to requests, and support our organizational strategy.

Key Cultural Competencies

• Create an environment that acknowledges, encourages, and celebrates differences.
• Function and communicate effectively and respectfully within the context of varying beliefs, behaviors, orientations, identities, and cultural backgrounds.
• Seek opportunities to gain experience working and collaborating in diverse, multicultural, and inclusive settings with a willingness to change for continual improvement.
• Adhere to all of PSU’s policies including the policies on Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment and the Professional Standards of Conduct.

Environmental Stewardship

Contributes to a culture of environmental stewardship, practices resource conservation, and actively works toward achieving long-term sustainability goals.

Work Days/Hours

On-Campus or Hybrid

Total Compensation Range & Benefits Statement

The starting annual salary rate for this position will be between $17.31/hr and $23.08/hr. The starting salary may be negotiable above this range, however, it is dependent upon the knowledge, experience, skills, and abilities of the chosen candidate, the budget of the hiring department, and approval from human resources.

PSU’s excellent benefits package includes 95% premium paid healthcare; a generous retirement and vacation package; and reduced tuition rates for employees, spouses, or dependents at any of the Oregon Public Universities. For more information about benefits, please visit PSU’s benefits page. Please visit the Total Compensation Calculator to explore the added value of PSU’s employee benefits.

Additional Application Instructions

Apply on the PSU HR job site at https://jobs.hrc.pdx.edu/postings/44492

If you have a disability and would like to request an accommodation in order to apply for a

position, or once you receive a position with Portland State University, please call 503-725-4926 or email askhrc@pdx.edu. This posting will be open until finalists are selected. The priority applicant deadline is Sunday, April 7, 2024.

Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every qualification in the job description, including the preferred qualifications. We are most interested in finding the best candidate for the job, and that candidate may be one who comes from a less traditional background. We encourage you to apply, even if you don’t believe you meet every one of our preferred qualifications

Please list the names, telephone numbers and email addresses for three professional references.

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