I left my last job supporting IT for a large municipality about a year and a half ago after burning out from public-safety support and being on call. Having a newborn daughter made the timing of the career break easier, but I'm now preparing to start a new position with a smaller municipality in about a month.
I recently had trouble remembering how to open Event Viewer while troubleshooting an Outlook issue, which made me realize that some of my day-to-day knowledge has gotten rusty. My new role is officially an endpoint engineer position, but the interview made it clear that I'll be covering a lot of different areas. I have a CCNA, although I haven't worked with Cisco equipment in more than five years. The organization also seems to be moving from traditional MDT imaging toward Intune provisioning, while my previous environment used SCCM.
What would be the best way to refresh my skills before starting? Should I focus on PowerShell, Intune and Autopilot, Entra, networking, or something else? I'd also appreciate advice for joining an organization that may have some turnover and figuring out expectations around after-hours work. Maybe the technical rust is normal and the bigger priority should be building better habits and protecting my work-life balance.
5 Answers
Use your first week to find out what the job actually involves instead of assuming the posting tells the whole story. Ask for the organization chart, existing documentation, the on-call or escalation process, and a list of the biggest incidents from the past few months. Since the team has had significant turnover, separate genuine urgent problems from old habits and undocumented processes before trying to fix everything.
Start with the job description and prioritize the technologies they specifically mentioned. You already demonstrated enough knowledge to get through the interview, and forgetting the name of a GUI tool after 18 months away is completely normal. The terminology usually comes back quickly once you’re using it again.
A lot of experienced administrators work primarily through PowerShell or other tooling, so forgetting the name of a particular management console does not mean the underlying knowledge is gone. Practical understanding matters more than instantly recalling every label.
You’re probably overestimating how much preparation you need. Skim the current Microsoft documentation for Intune and Autopilot so the move from MDT and SCCM is familiar, then build a small test environment if you have access to one. The concepts behind deployment, policy, identity, and troubleshooting will transfer even when the product names change.
The most important preparation may be setting boundaries early. Confirm how after-hours work is handled, whether there is an emergency contact process, and what qualifies as a true exception. Don’t put work email or chat on your personal phone just because it is convenient; otherwise people may gradually treat your availability as unlimited. A new job is a good opportunity to establish sustainable habits from the beginning.
A small lab would be useful, but keep it focused rather than trying to recreate an entire enterprise. Spend a couple of evenings reviewing PowerShell, Intune enrollment and Autopilot concepts, Entra ID, conditional access, group policy troubleshooting, and the differences between local and domain sign-in. A basic Windows machine plus some switch command-line practice can also bring back the networking muscle memory. You’ll probably need to ask where things are or look up exact syntax at first, and that’s normal even for people who have been working continuously.
The position does not include formal on-call, but I still want to understand the expectations around patching, meetings, and other after-hours work. I’m hoping to keep work apps off my personal phone and shut down at the end of the day unless there’s a clearly defined emergency.