MCDST
So my boss got the go ahead to order some training materials so that he and I can both become Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technicians. It’s not exactly the certification that I’ve been dreaming about or anything, but if they’re willing to fork up the money for self-paced training materials and testing fees, who am I to turn that down? Now we just have to figure out a way we can actually have time to work with the training materials, which will be difficult given the unpredictability of our work days.
Anyway, assuming I get some time to start this training up, I’m sure I’ll be posting more about it, and I’d love to hear from anyone who’s gotten this certification, and their impressions of it!
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I have one person on my team with this certification. It seems pretty useful, and a good demonstration of knowledge. We’ll see how well it works out long term. Good basic cert, in my opinion.
I am an MCDST (You should have known that Mike!)- one thing of note that there is a new version for vista so you may want to look at that instead. I got the chance to take the upgrade exam to the vista version but I don’t know much about vista and it was a 3 hour exam so passed.
Some of the benefits of mcdst when job hunting (i got the qualification the day before i interviewed for my present job) was that
a)no one had heard of it so it was a good talking/selling point at the interview
b)It was fairly easy for an experienced tech – I got 100% on the 2nd exam – another excellent selling point!
c)It takes you one level above the standard mcp certification that I already had – mcse or mcsa was too expensive to study, plan or pay for when not employed (although I had plenty of time to study – the resources of computers and experience was not available)
I’d certainly recommend it for any helpdesk support personnel – it makes them feel good and ensures you have people who do know what they are meant to be doing.
I actually studied for the test for two days – I purchased the measureup exam voucher and practise test bundle (cost $25 more than the exam voucher alone (assuming you don’t have access to discounted vouchers)) and then spent the entire day going through the questions and researching the areas I didn’t know about.
Feel free to contact me if you need any more q’s answered
The next exam I took and passed was the SBS Certification – again, one exam, one more string of letters after my name, another area of expertise.