IT User Services Apprentice - QA : Job Details

Heriot-Watt University has established a reputation for world-class teaching and leading-edge, relevant research, which has made it one of the top UK universities for innovation, business and industry.

Heriot-Watt University has five campuses: three in the UK (Edinburgh, Scottish Borders and Orkney), one in Dubai and one in Malaysia.  The University offers a highly distinctive range of degree programmes in the specialist areas of science, engineering, design, business and languages.  Heriot-Watt University is also Scotland's most international university, boasting the largest international student cohort.

Overview:

You will be working as part of The Global Information Services directorate, which provides a range of services to support, promote and supply information, information skills and infrastructure to support a modern research-intensive university in a global setting.  This straddles academic library provision alongside a range of technical services and systems such as IT and AV services, systems and support for learning and teaching, research and enterprise, operational effectiveness. It is an integrated global service, providing services to students, staff, applicants, alumni, external users across all five campuses.

Through a period of apprenticeship and training, you will learn and develop the necessary skills, expertise and experience to provide assistance to the members of the IT User Services (Service Desk and Service Delivery) teams and ultimately be able to fully perform the role of IT User Services Analyst.

Responsibilities:

• Working with others, develop skills to provide the customer interface to IT User Services via telephone and electronic communications. Contribute to handling incidents, problem records and service requests; proactively seek resolutions for customers; deal with issues and complaints in a professional and calm manner.
• Learning how to provide first line technical support on all IT related matters aiming at resolving majority of incidents at first point of call using advanced diagnostic techniques, system administrator rights and remote control of desktops.
• Developing an understanding of how to delegate incident/service requests which cannot be resolved at first point of contact to the appropriate group, retaining ownership through to resolution.
• Communicating with users – keeping them informed of incident progress, notifying them of impending changes or agreed outages.
• Contributing to user support for core University hardware and software, including the of setup new equipment and troubleshooting faults
• Endeavouring to pursue continuous service improvement culture, contribute to, maintain and update procedures.
• Maintaining accurate records and reporting information on the level of faults and requests by logging all relevant incident/service request details and allocating categorization and prioritisation codes.
• Understanding how and when to escalate to the appropriate manager any incidents that require reporting for further escalation.
• Assisting others to provide staff and students with support for connecting their personal computers to the University network.
• Contributing to effective communication with all staff and students in the resolution of faults and requests.
• Assisting others to define and maintain knowledge data by amending and creating documents under the approval of the IT Service Desk Specialist.
• Endeavouring to keep abreast of current and emerging hardware and software technologies.
• Assisting others to provide cover and technical support in other areas of IT support as required.
• Maintaining a personal development programme as agreed with line manager.

The successful candidate will have:

• Good problem solving ability
• Good verbal and written communication skills
• Disciplined and self-motivated
• Able to work alone as well as part of a team
• Strong interest in IT
• Good timekeeping
• Willingness to learn

Salary: £22,995 per annum

Working hours: 35 hours per week, Monday to Friday, 9am - 5pm

Benefits:

• 28 days annual leave plus 9 buildings closed days 
• 6% employer pension contributions

Future prospects:

90% of QA apprentices secure permanent employment after completing: this is 20% higher than the national average.

Important information:

This vocational apprenticeship comprehensively supports your specific job role with this particular employer.  Throughout your learning journey, you are fully supported by your dedicated QA skills coach and your mentor at work.  They ensure you settle in, help you develop all the skills you need to be successful in your job role and pass your assessments, and can provide one to one support.

Starting with insights into your current potential, they plan your growth in a programmatic way, close skills gaps with immersive training and ensure what you learn is applicable to what you do. They talk you through the specifics on the qualifications you gain and how they align in particular to your day to day role.

On completion, as well as the valuable work experience you have gained, you get a nationally recognised qualification at SCQF Level 8. 

If you are interested in starting your career and receiving a work based qualification at the same time APPLY NOW!