Service Desk Agent Must-Have Resume Skills and Keywords
Are you interested in improving your job outlook and increasing your salary? How can you demonstrate that you are the most qualified candidate for a Service Desk Agent position? Of course continuing to gain experience working as a Service Desk Agent may be your best qualification, but there are other ways you can also develop your skills, like continuing education or volunteer opportunities. More immediately, however, you can be ready for your next opportunity or promotion by educating yourself about the duties, responsibilities, and required skills of a Service Desk Agent and making sure your resume reflects your experience properly.
We designed the ZipRecruiter Career Keyword Mapper to help you solve this problem and hopefully improve your resume. Using machine learning tools paired with industry research, our Marketplace Research Team helped analyze millions of job postings and resumes to identify the most important keywords related to Service Desk Agent jobs. Our goal is to help you discover opportunities to improve your resume or to help you understand what skills and qualifications you need to be a Service Desk Agent or to advance your career into beyond this role.
The top three keywords employers use in Service Desk Agent job descriptions are Customer Service appearing in 29.32% of postings, Technical 16.26%, and Troubleshooting appearing in 11.04%. 56.62% of Service Desk Agent job postings have at least one of these terms indicating the value employers place commonly place on these experiences when hiring candidates. Hardware, Communication Skills and Information Technology are still quite important, but a smaller sliceof the employer Service Desk Agent job postings with their combined total of 21.59%. At 21.79%, Help Desk Support, ITSM, Microsoft Windows, and Detail Oriented appear far less frequently, but are still a significant portion of the 10 top Service Desk Agent skills and requirements according to employers.
Job seeker resumes showcase a broad range of skills and qualifications in their descriptions of Service Desk Agent positions. The top three keywords represent 43.41% of the total set of top resume listed keywords. Look to the Resume Checklist below to investigate how Customer Service, Troubleshooting, and Technical match up to employer job descriptions. Hardware, Active Directory, and Information Technology represent a very decent share of skills found on resumes for Service Desk Agent with 28.74% of the total. At 27.87%, MS Office, Microsoft Windows, Help Desk Support, and Database appear far less frequently, but are still a significant portion of the 10 top Service Desk Agent skills and qualifications found on resumes.
Here is a simple table of the top 10 skills and qualifications as listed by employers in Service Desk Agent job postings since January of 2018, followed by the top 10 skills and qualifications most commonly listed by people who held the title of Service Desk Agent on their resumes.
Top Service Desk Agent Skills
Skills Required by Employers |
Share |
Customer Service |
29.32% |
Technical |
16.26% |
Troubleshooting |
11.04% |
Hardware |
7.98% |
Communication Skills |
7.19% |
Information Technology |
6.42% |
Help Desk Support |
6.09% |
ITSM |
5.64% |
Microsoft Windows |
5.45% |
Detail Oriented |
4.61% |
Skills Listed by Employees |
Share |
Customer Service |
17.71% |
Troubleshooting |
13.72% |
Technical |
11.98% |
Hardware |
10.16% |
Active Directory |
9.64% |
Information Technology |
8.94% |
MS Office |
8.42% |
Microsoft Windows |
7.64% |
Help Desk Support |
6.60% |
Database |
5.21% |
Our Resume Keyword Checklist is based upon an analysis of the most commonly found terms within both job descriptions and resumes for Service Desk Agent roles. Our algorithm helps isolate phrases and patterns to identify the most frequently recurring and reused keywords from each data source, while correcting for uncommon and outlier results. Various heuristic methodologies are then applied to ultimately create two top 20 lists of the most important and significant skills, certificates and requirements found within Service Desk Agent job postings and resumes. We then merge the two lists together and use a combination of statistics and rules-based scenarios to create a list that is audited by the Marketplace Research team, and finally turned into the checklist you see below. Our hope is that knowing this information can help you make your best impression with your next potential employer.
Uncommon Keywords on Service Desk Agent Resumes
Job Descriptions
Resumes
Employer job listings tend to list Innovation, ITSM or Interpersonal Skills as requirements in Service Desk Agent job descriptions; however, job seekers mention them far less frequently on their resumes. If you possess any or all of these experiences, including these keywords prominently on your resume when applying for a Service Desk Agent role may help you stand out more to hiring managers.
Common Keywords on Service Desk Agent Resumes
Job Descriptions
Resumes
Both employer job listings and resumes from people who’ve held the role of Service Desk Agent tend to always include skills and requirements found in this list. Whether you’ve only got Detail Oriented, Security Clearance, Customer Service, Problem Solving Skills, Communication Skills, Technical, Documentation, Accountable, Help Desk Support, Troubleshooting, Hardware, Information Technology, Microsoft Windows or Ticketing Systems in your background and experience, make sure to highlight the term prominently on your resume. As a job seeker you’ll be competing with many others who are bound to have as many as you (or more!) of these common resume keywords highlighted in their application for a job as a Service Desk Agent.
Uncommon Keywords on Service Desk Agent Job Descriptions
Job Descriptions
Resumes
Employer job listings infrequently list VPN, MS Office, Active Directory, Database, Outlook or Citrix as important skills or qualifications in Service Desk Agent job descriptions. Nevertheless, job seekers mention them much more commonly in their resumes. If you possess any or all of these experiences, including these keywords prominently on your resume when applying for a Service Desk Agent role may go unnoticed or even discounted by hiring managers.
The most common important skills required by employers are Detail Oriented, Security Clearance, Customer Service, Problem Solving Skills, Communication Skills, Technical and Documentation. These skills and requirements are just as likely to be mentioned by employers as well as on resumes of people that held a job as a Service Desk Agent, suggesting that having these keywords on a resume are important for success as a Service Desk Agent. Additionally, employer Service Desk Agent job descriptions list Innovation as a desirable experience, even though Innovation appears 3.82 times less on resumes, suggesting that it's worth considering including this skill if you possess the experience.
Although you'd probably love to load up your resume with every possible keyword you can, employers tend to look for the things they specify in the job description. Our analysis suggests that highlighting too prominently terms like VPN, MS Office, Active Directory, Database, Outlook and Citrix may be something to reconsider. These 6 terms appear 2.01, 2.50, 2.68, 2.91, 3.82 and 4.85 times less frequently, respectively, than in job descriptions for a Service Desk Agent role. This indicates that highlighting any of these keywords on your resume may not be a great way to get noticed by a potential employer.
Unless your resume has a good density of the following skills and experience listed, you may not be considered for the role of Service Desk Agent. Make sure to include a strong showing for the following keywords on your resume:
- Detail Oriented
- Security Clearance
- Customer Service
- Problem Solving Skills
- Communication Skills
- Technical
- Documentation
- Accountable
- Help Desk Support
- Troubleshooting
- Hardware
- Information Technology
- Microsoft Windows
- Ticketing Systems
Additionally employers frequently list the following as desirable qualities in a Service Desk Agent candidate, but they are far less common on most resumes:
- Innovation
- ITSM
- Interpersonal Skills
Finally people who held the position of a Service Desk Agent and list it on their resume are adding these terms that are less likely to be noticed by employers. You may want to consider downplaying these terms on your Service Desk Agent application:
- VPN
- MS Office
- Active Directory
- Database
- Outlook
- Citrix
At ZipRecruiter, we understand better than anyone the importance of using the right keywords to describe your experience — it’s crucial to attracting the right employers! We built our business on the ability to effectively match job seekers with employers using AI-technology that understands your resume and how likely you are to be noticed by a potential future employer. Having a ZipRecruiter profile that showcases your most relevant skills and abilities can help you get recruited into a new role as a Service Desk Agent. Get started on your journey with a new ZipRecruiter Profile today!