Networking Career Retraining 2009
There are a range of options on the market for people hoping to get into working with computers. For assistance in selecting the right one for you, seek out a training provider that will help you to work out which career will match your personal profile, as well as explaining the job responsibilities, to confirm you’re on the right track. If you’re mulling over advancing your technological abilities, maybe by improving your office user skills, or even becoming an IT professional, you can choose from many training options.
By reducing overhead structures, there are now companies offering modern courses with excellent training and mentoring for much lower prices than those charged by old-school colleges.
Wouldn’t it be great to know for sure that our jobs will always be secure and our work prospects are protected, but the likely scenario for most jobs around the UK right now appears to be that security just isn’t there anymore. Of course, a quickly growing market-place, with huge staffing demands (because of a massive shortage of trained workers), provides a market for proper job security.
Using the Information Technology (IT) industry for example, a key e-Skills analysis showed major skills shortages across the UK of around 26 percent. That means for every four jobs that are available throughout computing, we have only 3 certified professionals to fill that need. This single concept alone reveals why the country needs considerably more people to get into the IT sector. With the market evolving at such a rate, there really isn’t any other area of industry worth taking into account for your new career.
It’s irrefutable, the UK Information Technology (IT) industry offers exceptional possibilities. However, to investigate it properly, what sort of questions should we be raising, and what are the sectors we need to investigate?
For the most part, your average person doesn’t know how they should get into Information Technology, or even which area they should be considering getting trained in. As without any previous experience in Information Technology, how should we possibly be expected to understand what a particular job actually consists of? To work through this, a discussion is necessary, covering many unique issues:
* Your personality can play a major role – what things get your juices flowing, and what are the activities that get you down.
* Are you aiming to pull off a key objective – like working for yourself in the near future?
* Have you thought about salary vs job satisfaction?
* Learning what typical job areas and markets are – and what makes them different.
* What effort, commitment and time you’re prepared to put into obtaining your certification.
For the majority of us, considering all these ideas needs a long talk with an advisor that knows what they’re talking about. Not only the accreditations – but also the commercial requirements and expectations of the market as well.
Proper support should never be taken lightly – look for a package providing 24×7 full access, as anything else will annoy you and definitely put a damper on the speed you move through things. Avoid those companies that use ‘out-of-hours’ call-centres – where you’ll get called back during the next ‘working’ day. It’s not a lot of help when you’ve got study issues and could do with an answer during your scheduled study period.
The most successful trainers use multiple support centres around the globe in several time-zones. By utilising an interactive interface to provide a seamless experience, any time of the day or night, help is just seconds away, without any contact issues or hassle. If you fail to get yourself online 24×7 support, you’ll regret it very quickly. You might not want to use the service in the middle of the night, but consider weekends, evenings and early mornings at some point.
We’d hazard a guess that you probably enjoy fairly practical work – a ‘hands-on’ person. If you’re anything like us, the painful task of reading endless manuals is something you’ll force on yourself if you absolutely have to, but you’d hate it. You should use video and multimedia based materials if you’d really rather not use books. Learning psychology studies show that we remember much more when we receive multi-sensorial input, and we get physically involved with the study process.
Programs are now found in disc format, where everything is taught on your PC. Utilising the latest video technology, you will be able to see the instructor presenting exactly how to perform the required skill, followed by your chance to practice – in an interactive lab. Any company that you’re considering must be able to demonstrate a few examples of the type of training materials they provide. Expect video tutorials, instructor led classes and a variety of interactive modules.
Purely on-line training should be avoided. Ideally, you should opt for CD and DVD ROM courseware where offered, so that you have access at all times – you don’t want to be reliant on your broadband being ‘up’ 100 percent of the time.
A question; why might we choose commercial qualifications and not more traditional academic qualifications obtained from the state educational establishments? With university education costs increasing year on year, plus the IT sector’s general opinion that corporate based study often has more relevance in the commercial field, there has been a large rise in Microsoft, CompTIA, CISCO and Adobe based training routes that educate students at a much reduced cost in terms of money and time. In essence, only that which is required is learned. It’s slightly more broad than that, but principally the objective has to be to cover the precise skills needed (including a degree of required background) – without trying to cram in every other area (as academia often does).
When an employer is aware what areas they need covered, then they simply need to advertise for a person with the appropriate exam numbers. Vendor-based syllabuses are all based on the same criteria and can’t change from one establishment to the next (in the way that degree courses can).
Exam ‘guarantees’ are sometimes offered as part of a training package – they always involve paying for the exam fees up-front, when you pay for the rest of your course. But before you get taken in by the chance of a guarantee, be aware of the facts:
You’ll pay for it by some means. It’s definitely not free – it’s just been rolled into the price of the whole package. Students who enter their exams one by one, paying for them just before taking them are much more likely to pass. They are aware of what they’ve paid and revise more thoroughly to be ready for the task.
Don’t pay up-front, but seek out the best deal for you at the time, and save having to find the money early. In addition, it’s then your choice where to take your exam – so you can find somewhere local. Why borrow the money or pay in advance (plus interest of course) on examination fees when there’s absolutely nothing that says you have to? A lot of profit is made by companies charging all their exam fees up-front – and then cashing in when they’re not all taken. Additionally, you should consider what an ‘exam guarantee’ really means. Most companies will not pay for re-takes until you have demonstrated conclusively that you won’t fail again.
With average Prometric and VUE exams coming in at around 112 pounds in the UK, it makes sense to pay as you go. Why splash out often many hundreds of pounds extra at the beginning of your training? A commitment to studying and the use of authorised exam preparation tools are actually the key to your success.
Be careful that the accreditations you’re considering doing will be recognised by employers and are bang up to date. The ‘in-house’ certifications provided by many companies are usually worthless. Unless the accreditation comes from a conglomerate such as Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco or CompTIA, then you may discover it won’t be commercially viable – as no-one will have heard of it.