NOC Analyst? General job advice

[Butchered]

Hey everyone.

I had an interview recently for a NOC Analyst position that was schedule prior to me knowing about the possibility of keeping my current job. It sounds like a fine job, but the interview was bizarre. They didn't ask me a single technical question. I felt like I was in a retail interview. "Tell me about a tough project you've worked on" "Tell me about how you handle a tough end user you've had to work with". Not a single question about my technical ability or knowledge.

The current position I'm in (IMO) is Desktop Support only in title. We're responsible for just about everything that happens on our contract, not just end user stuff (which we of course do as well). We're involved in hardware building, light vSphere stuff, creating and implementing new policies/procedures for our account, and all kinds of other stuff I wouldn't really consider typical desktop support tasks.

I guess my concern comes from the interview. It seemed like it was much more centered around customer service than any kind of knowledge or ability. The interview for my current job was more like a test. I worked retail for long enough and hated it long enough to go back to school at 29 to get a degree. I don't mind working with internal end users, but my thought is if a client has their site go down, they're losing money and they're not going to be pleasant.

I feel like the NOC position provides more specialized experience in the mitigation and network side, but the environment might not be as enjoyable. Anyone have any input on this kind of position?

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[dogbazinho]

NOC Analyst doesn't really describe what you would be expected to do in that position. Like your position in desktop support, there can be many different roles and responsibilities a NOC Analyst may be expected to do. What are your goals in IT?

I will say as someone that has been a part of the hiring process I would be hesitant to leave a position in less than a year. If done too many times it can reflect poorly on your resume.

 

[Butchered]

NOC Analyst doesn't really describe what you would be expected to do in that position. Like your position in desktop support, there can be many different roles and responsibilities a NOC Analyst may be expected to do. What are your goals in IT?

I will say as someone that has been a part of the hiring process I would be hesitant to leave a position in less than a year. If done too many times it can reflect poorly on your resume.

Honestly, my goals are to work somewhere, get my paycheck and go home to my family. I'm not interested in advancing far enough in a company where I'm working 60 hours a week. We rotate on call in our office once a month and that's fine, but other than my week on call, I don't check my email after hours or bring my laptop home.

I feel like I will get more specialized experience from the NOC job (networking, monitoring), but more rounded experience from my current job (dipping into a little of everything).

It was just kind of hard to get a read from the guys during my interview on exactly what I'd be doing. He went out of his way to make it sound completely hectic, but later said some days you'll come in and the phone won't ring once and no outages will occur. Almost every job description I've found for a NOC Analyst pretty much says the same thing. Was hoping maybe someone had done the job or something similar and could give some examples of what exactly they did.

As far as leaving, I'm leaving because I have to at least right now operate under the assumption I will be laid off in May. There is a possibility that won't happen, but I was told to start looking for a new job. It's not a matter of jumping jobs, it's a matter of making sure I am employed. I'd definitely prefer to stick to this job (it's honestly pretty cushy in all aspects, lol).

 

[PALE PWNR]

Honestly, my goals are to work somewhere, get my paycheck and go home to my family. I'm not interested in advancing far enough in a company where I'm working 60 hours a week. We rotate on call in our office once a month and that's fine, but other than my week on call, I don't check my email after hours or bring my laptop home.

I feel like I will get more specialized experience from the NOC job (networking, monitoring), but more rounded experience from my current job (dipping into a little of everything).

It was just kind of hard to get a read from the guys during my interview on exactly what I'd be doing. He went out of his way to make it sound completely hectic, but later said some days you'll come in and the phone won't ring once and no outages will occur. Almost every job description I've found for a NOC Analyst pretty much says the same thing. Was hoping maybe someone had done the job or something similar and could give some examples of what exactly they did.

As far as leaving, I'm leaving because I have to at least right now operate under the assumption I will be laid off in May. There is a possibility that won't happen, but I was told to start looking for a new job. It's not a matter of jumping jobs, it's a matter of making sure I am employed. I'd definitely prefer to stick to this job (it's honestly pretty cushy in all aspects, lol).

Take the guarenteed job. Or look for another that maybe you will like more.

 

[Paul Dipietro]

Speaking from personal experience dealing with various NOCs, the NOC is essentially the single point of contact for outages (Network, Telecom, Telephony or other), which can either be detected by the various monitoring tools at your disposal, or reported internally or by the customer

The job of a NOC analyst is to acknowledge/log an outage and either deal with it (based on documented procedures and/or experience), or dispatch it to the proper teams (usually in the form of an "incident" in a ticketing system). The ticket would ultimately come back to you as resolved (if the team you dispatched it to finds a solution), or it could be bounced to a different team (eg. the issue that was thought to be a telephony problem is actually network-related). Either way, the NOC would typically be on the clock until the outage is resolved so they tend to poke the teams involved for updates on a regular basis

In terms of career advancement, from what I've seen NOC analysts often move to L2-3 jobs in the other teams mentioned above (since they essentially serve as L1 for all of them)

Hope this helps

 

[Butchered]

Speaking from personal experience dealing with various NOCs, the NOC is essentially the single point of contact for outages (Network, Telecom, Telephony or other), which can either be detected by the various monitoring tools at your disposal, or reported internally or by the customer

The job of a NOC analyst is to acknowledge/log an outage and either deal with it (based on documented procedures and/or experience), or dispatch it to the proper teams (usually in the form of an "incident" in a ticketing system). The ticket would ultimately come back to you as resolved (if the team you dispatched it to finds a solution), or it could be bounced to a different team (eg. the issue that was thought to be a telephony problem is actually network-related). Either way, the NOC would typically be on the clock until the outage is resolved so they tend to poke the teams involved for updates on a regular basis

In terms of career advancement, from what I've seen NOC analysts often move to L2-3 jobs in the other teams mentioned above (since they essentially serve as L1 for all of them)

Hope this helps

It does. I appreciate this input.

 

[SniperHF]

It does. I appreciate this input.

Just a bit off of what Paul said, depending on the company it can be a mostly non-technical job at the first level. That might explain why your interview questions were not what you expected.

Also like what dogbazinho about NOC Analyst not necessarily being super descriptive applies. I currently have analyst in my job title and I do more work with hardware than anything .

If the company you applied to is something like a telcom provider as one of the examples Paul mentioned, his description is spot on. If it's something else the company could be doing a bit of square peg/round hole work on their titles. At my current employer titles are nearly meaningless

 

[Butchered]

Just a bit off of what Paul said, depending on the company it can be a mostly non-technical job at the first level. That might explain why your interview questions were not what you expected.

Also like what dogbazinho about NOC Analyst not necessarily being super descriptive applies. I currently have analyst in my job title and I do more work with hardware than anything .

If the company you applied to is something like a telcom provider as one of the examples Paul mentioned, his description is spot on. If it's something else the company could be doing a bit of square peg/round hole work on their titles. At my current employer titles are nearly meaningless

Thanks for the input. Definitely explains the strange interview. I'm not sure I want to go into a position where I won't actually be doing anything to further my technical abilities. I kind of feel like that would be a step backwards. I was telling my wife that I was questioning how much I would actually be doing outside of customer service if they weren't even interested in talking about that part (even if it is on my resume, it seems very unusual to discuss them). I've only had 3 interviews in the field though, so maybe it's a little more common?

I'm super grateful I was given like a 5 month heads up on looking for a new job, but that also gives me a little bit of time to be picky in the super short term. I can still either hold out a little in hopes of my current position sticking or hold out for a better fit for me.

As someone new to the tech field, this is something I noticed pretty quickly in regards to titles at my office as well. We have a Unix guy here that does literally almost everything under the sun but Unix. We have an offsite guy that manages most of it.

 

[dogbazinho]

Just to add to what has already been said about Analysts. What someone said earlier about NOC Analysts is correct but what I've seen at my current company is the Analyst position is something of a catch all. We have 4-5 tiers of Analysts and someone hired as a NOC Analyst I will have different expectations than a NOC Analyst IV.

It's a great entry point into Networking but depending on your skill set, just reacting to alerts and switching cables all day could be boring. With the right company you should be able to quickly move up. I'd recommend looking at glassdoor and like minded sites and compare your current company to the new one. In IT you have to be fairly nimble and want to work for a company that will look after you.

<- Was a Analyst IV and now Support Lead III (not NOC. In Incident Management)