Support Specialist

About Our Organization:

At Youth Guidance, we believe that no matter what challenges a young person faces, they are more likely to succeed when they have caring adults in their lives. Our highly-trained staff guides kids to overcome the life and academic challenges facing Chicago’s youth. We meet kids where they are — physically and emotionally — to help them focus on their education, make positive choices, and remain on the right path toward life success.

Founded in 1924  today Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs serving more than 8,500 youth while touching the lives of more than 14,000 youth, parents, teachers, and community members.

About You:

You have the passion and desire to work in a dynamic non-profit organization, you have the talent and skills to perform the job, and now you’re looking for just the right opportunity.  At Youth Guidance you’ll have the chance to use your passion and skills working alongside a team of talented individuals who share the same values.

The ideal candidate will exhibit outstanding customer service skills, technical expertise, and knowledge base information in performing this role.  Therefore, you must be self-motivated require minimal direction, and have a passion for Information Technology as you will be involved with all technical aspects as part of the IT team.  Youth Guidance is a place where you will be valued for your skills and recognized for your accomplishments and our employees and clients will benefit from your unique approach to information technology.

Position Summary:

This position is responsible for receiving and distributing the assignment of IT support requests electronically, via phone and in person in a fast-paced non-profit environment. Travel to various sites to resolve technical issues. Provide excellent customer service to on-site and off-site employees.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Assist Support Analyst to identify, isolate, troubleshoot, document and resolve IT issues.
• Assist Support Analyst to install, deploy, and maintain IT hardware and software systems.
• Assist with new user orientation and onboarding processes.
• Coordinate timely repair of equipment covered under 3rd party maintenance agreements.
• Recognize and escalate high-level issues as appropriate.
• Perform preventative maintenance on IT systems as directed.
• Provide support for cell phones, including set-up, redeployment, reconditioning and upgrades.
• Maintain orderly, up-to-date records, documentation, and files, using approved practices and record-keeping systems, including inventory.
• Reclaim assets as necessary at the central office and at remote location.
• Provide support for agency printers and copiers.
• Monitor, manage, and report on ticketing system for quality improvement.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education/Experience/Training

• High school diploma, Associate degree or higher in Computer Technology or equivalent field experience.
• Certifications are a plus.
• Minimum of two years of technical/customer service experience.

Skills/Abilities

• Experience troubleshooting both local and wide area network issues.
• Experience troubleshooting Windows, SharePoint, Microsoft Office, VoIP, and application issues.
• Prior experience installing software and hardware components in a Windows environment required.
• Must possess excellent communication and customer service skills.

Core Competencies

• Communication: Uses effective written and oral communication with internal staff, teams, and community served; demonstrates empathy and listening
• Client orientation: Recognizes needs of diverse stakeholders and approaches relationships with a service orientation, to ultimately maximize the impact
• Equity mindset: Understands and is committed to goals of equity, consistently brings an equity mindset to the organization’s work and workplace
• Growth mindset: Views growth as important for personal and professional development; seeks out opportunities to expand skills, even if the change is required, demonstrates curiosity and eagerness to learn
• Ownership and quality of work: Effectively manages own work, and the work of the team to ensure delivery of high-quality work
• Supervisory skills: Effectively manages and develops others
• Mission drive: Demonstrates commitment to the missing of the organization as a whole and alignment with organization values

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• This job operates in a professional office environment, school setting, and working with the public, COVID-19 vaccination is required
• Occasional local and national travel
• COVID-19 vaccination is required

What Youth Guidance offers:

We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:

• A hiring incentive of $250 for part-time and $750 for full-time
• A retention incentive of $250 after 90 days of continuous service.
• A competitive benefit package. Even though healthcare costs have gone up, we have not passed along those increases to our staff.
• If you are pursuing your social services licensure, we can help you by providing licensure test study support. Licensing test reimbursement. Assistance in attaining licensure supervision hours.

DEI Statement

At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and recognize them as empowered leaders, problem-solvers, and experts of their own experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that many systems and institutions meant to support youth are inequitable and unjust.

As such, we are committed to advancing DE&I through our words and our actions, both internally and externally, by:

• Strengthening cultural competence as well as policies, practices, and organizational structures that foster belonging and leverage the unique backgrounds and talents of staff;
• Offering youth-centered programs that are accessible and responsive to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, language, and cultural and religious beliefs and practices;
• Influencing systems that youth, their families, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEI in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people.