It is a hard field to break into, unless you're willing to work for small amounts of money. A lot of IT help desks have been outsourced to India and other countries. The ones that are still around don't pay as much as they once did.

My son told me that Microsoft is going to end their "certification" programs by the end of June. I'll have to confirm that, though. For a help desk specialist, you'll need a decent background in troubleshooting hardware, software and be able to use remote apps to check out what's going on on a customer's PC.

I started as a development intern then got a lowly development job. That lead to a UNIX helpdesk position. So sort of. Never have been Windows helpdesk.

This site has the step by step process to get into a Help Desk support career. There's also links for free training sites.. Good Luck! - https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/21412-how-to-become-help-desk-support-specialist