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IT CAREER TRACKS:

Office Specialist

An Office Specialist, also known as an application support specialist, or Microsoft Office support specialist, is an IT professional who is a power user of a Microsoft Office family of products or a trainer on these products. These professionals may also perform other job roles such as network managers, webmasters, programmers and management assistants. This role requires having an in depth knowledge of one or more Microsoft Office applications so as to be able to quickly and effectively help users, whether internal (users) or external (customer), with their problems concerning these applications.


DUTIES

Duties of an Office specialist include providing answers to Office users’ problems, supplying training and feedback to those users to lessen the occurrence of future problems, troubleshooting difficult or unusual situations, and suggesting workflow improvements to management. Office specialists perform an introductory to mid-level technical role. A good understanding of PCs, operating systems, and Office products is necessary. Equally important, however, are strong interpersonal skills such as effective listening, empathy, patience, and the ability to carefully walk a user through problem resolution steps either remotely or in person. In terms of remote support, the capacity to visualize what’s taking place on the user’s desktop is hugely beneficial.


PREREQUISITES

A person may consider entering this field after attaining a non-technical university degree or a one or two year computer diploma from a local technical institute. Also, some formal training and certification on Office products is highly recommended. The aptitude to troubleshoot problems under pressure, as well as defuse excited and sometimes irate users or customers, is also valuable.


ADVANCEMENT

An Office specialist will, in time, move on to more advanced technical roles, such as system or network administrator, application developer, or database administrator. Some will also become technical trainers. Whichever path an Office specialist takes, he or she should also move up the salary ladder.


Certification Examples Include:

MOS 2003; MOS XP; MOS XP Expert; MOS XP Master