Finding The Right IT Training 2009
A fraction of the working population in the United Kingdom are pleased and contented with their working life. The vast majority of course won’t do a thing. You’ve reached this paragraph, which at least means that change is beckoning.
With regard to individual courses, discuss your thoughts with an industry expert who will give you advice on the right type of training for you. A person who will get an understanding of your personality, and find out what types of work suit you:
* Is working with other people your thing? Perhaps you like being a team player? Perhaps you prefer not to be disturbed and enjoy responsibilities that you can complete alone?
* What do you require from the area of industry you choose? (If it’s stability you’re after, you might think twice about banks or the building industry right now.)
* How long a career do you hope to have once retrained, and can the industry you choose offer you the chance to do that?
* Do you feel uncomfortable about the possibility of finding new employment, and staying employable right up to retirement?
We would advise you to find out more about the IT industry – there are greater numbers of roles than people to do them, plus it’s a rare career choice where the industry is on the grow. Contrary to what some people believe, IT isn’t all techie people staring at their computers every day (if you like the sound of that though, they do exist.) The vast majority of roles are occupied by average folk who like receiving larger than average salaries.
Be under no illusions, the UK computing industry promises outstanding possibilities. Yet, to investigate fully, what are the questions we need to ask, and which are the areas we need to look at?
It’s important to understand: a training course or the accreditation isn’t what this is about; the career that you want to end up in is. A lot of colleges seem to over-emphasise the course or the qualification. It’s quite usual, for example, to get a great deal of enjoyment from a year of study but end up spending 10 or 20 years in a job you hate, entirely because you stumbled into it without the correct research at the outset.
Take time to understand your feelings on career progression and earning potential, plus your level of ambition. You should understand what industry expects from you, which certifications will be required and where you’ll pick-up experience from. Seek out help from an industry professional that appreciates the market you’re interested in, and who can give you ‘A typical day in the life of’ outline of what you’ll actually be doing with each working day. It makes good sense to discover if this is the right course of action for you long before you jump into the study-program. What’s the reason in kicking off your training and then find you’ve taken the wrong route.
You have to make sure that all your certifications are commercially valid and current – don’t even consider programmes which provide certificates that are worthless because they’re ‘in-house’. To an employer, only top businesses such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe (for instance) really carry any commercial clout. Anything less just doesn’t cut the mustard.
A lot of training providers will only provide support to you inside of office hours (typically 9am-6pm) and sometimes a little earlier or later; very few go late in the evening or at weekends. Never buy study programmes that only provide support to you through a call-centre messaging service when it’s outside of usual working hours. Companies will always try to hide the importance of this issue. Essentially – you want to be supported when you need the help – not at times when they find it cheaper to provide it.
The best training colleges tend to use a web-based round-the-clock package involving many support centres from around the world. You get an easy to use interface that switches seamlessly to the best choice of centres no matter what time of day it is: Support when you need it. Don’t accept second best where support is concerned. Many trainees that throw in the towel, would have had a different experience if they’d got the right support package in the first place.
Students who consider this area of study often have a very practical outlook on work, and don’t always take well to classrooms, and struggling through thick study-volumes. If this is putting you off studying, try the newer style of interactive study, with on-screen demonstrations and labs. Many years of research has constantly verified that getting into our studies physically, is much more conducive to long-term memory.
The latest home-based training features self-contained CD or DVD materials. Instructor-led tutorials will mean you’ll learn your subject by way of their teaching and demonstrations. Then it’s time to test your knowledge by interacting with the software and practicing yourself. Always insist on a demonstration of the study materials from your training provider. The package should contain expert-led demonstrations, slideshows and lab’s for you to practice your skills in.
You should avoid purely online training. Ideally, you should opt for CD and DVD ROM courseware where available, enabling them to be used at your convenience – ISP quality varies, so you don’t want to be totally reliant on a quality and continuous internet connection.
It’s quite a normal occurrence for students not to check on a vitally important element – the way their training provider segments the courseware sections, and into what particular chunks. Many companies enrol you into some sort of program spread over 1-3 years, and courier the materials in pieces as you complete each section or exam. On the surface this seems reasonable – until you consider the following: What if you find the order insisted on by the company won’t suit you. It may be difficult to get through each and every section at the speed required?
For the perfect solution, you’d get ALL the training materials right at the beginning – enabling you to have them all to come back to at any time in the future – as and when you want. Variations can then be made to the order that you complete each objective where a more intuitive path can be found.
It’s not uncommon for companies to offer inclusive exam guarantees – this always means you have to pay for the exams at the start of your training. Before you get carried away with a course with such a promise, why not consider this:
They’ve allowed costings for it by some means. You can be assured it’s not a freebie – it’s simply been shoe-horned into the price as a whole. If you want to qualify first ‘go’, evidence suggests you must fund each exam as you take it, prioritise it appropriately and apply yourself as required.
Why pay a college early for exam fees? Find the best exam deal or offer at the appropriate time, don’t pay mark-ups – and sit exams more locally – rather than in some remote place. A surprising number of current training providers secure a great deal of profit because they’re getting paid for exams at the start of the course then cashing in if they’re not all taken. It’s worth noting that exam re-takes through companies with an ‘Exam Guarantee’ are always heavily controlled. You’ll be required to sit pre-tests till you’ve proven conclusively that you can pass.
Splashing out often many hundreds of pounds extra on ‘Exam Guarantees’ is naive – when consistent and systematic learning, coupled with quality exam simulation software is what will really see you through.
Sometimes, individuals don’t understand what IT means. It’s thrilling, changing, and means you’re a part of the huge progress of technology that will affect us all over the next generation. Computing technology and dialogue via the internet will noticeably alter the way we live our lives over future years; profoundly so.
If money is way up on your goal sheet, then you will be happy to know that the income on average for most men and women in IT is a lot greater than salaries in the rest of the economy. Due to the technological sector increasing nationally and internationally, it’s likely that demand for appropriately qualified IT professionals will flourish for decades to come.
