Selecting CompTIA Training in 2009
The CompTIA A+ training program covers four areas of training; you’re seen as competent at A+ when you’ve gained exams for half of them. This is why most training providers only teach 2 specialised areas. In fact to carry out a job effectively, you’ll need the teaching in all areas as many jobs will require the skills and knowledge of the entire course. You don’t have to qualify in them all, however we’d advise that you take tutorials in all 4 subjects.
Courses in A+ computer training teach diagnostic techniques and fault-finding – via hands on and remote access, in addition to building and fixing and having knowledge of antistatic conditions. Should you decide to add Network+ to your CompTIA A+ training course, you will additionally be able to take care of networks, which means you’ll be able to expect a better remuneration package.
How do we go about making an educated decision then? With such prospects, we’ll need to know where to investigate – and what to be looking for.
Don’t forget: a training course or the accreditation isn’t the end-goal; a job that you want to end up in is. A lot of colleges seem to completely prioritise just the training course. It’s common, in many cases, to obtain tremendous satisfaction from a year of studying and then spend 20 miserable years in something completely unrewarding, as a consequence of not performing some decent due-diligence at the outset.
You need to keep your eye on where you want to get to, and build your study action-plan from that – not the other way round. Keep your eyes on your goals and ensure that you’re training for a job that will keep you happy for many years. As a precursor to beginning a particular study course, it makes sense to chat over the exact market requirements with a skilled professional, so as to be sure the retraining program covers all that is required.
You have to be sure that all your qualifications are current and also valid commercially – forget programs which provide certificates that are worthless because they’re ‘in-house’. If your certification doesn’t come from a major player like Microsoft, Adobe, CompTIA or Cisco, then you’ll probably find it won’t be commercially viable – as no-one will have heard of it.
Most trainers only give 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. some companies only provide email support (slow), and so-called telephone support is normally just routed to a call-centre that will chat nicely with you for 5 minutes to ask what the issue is and then simply send an email to an instructor – who’ll call back sometime over the next 1-3 days, at a suitable time to them. This is all next to useless if you’re sitting there confused over an issue and have a one hour time-slot in which to study.
Keep your eyes open for providers that have multiple support offices active in different time-zones. Each one should be integrated to enable simple one-stop access together with 24 hours-a-day access, when it suits you, with no hassle. Don’t ever make the mistake of taking second best with the quality of your support. Most trainees who can’t get going properly, are in that situation because of a lack of support.
Usually, trainers will provide a bunch of books and manuals. It’s not a very interesting way to learn and isn’t the best way to go about taking things in. Research over recent years has constantly demonstrated that connecting physically with our study, is proven to produce longer-lasting and deeper memory retention.
Fully interactive motion videos with demonstrations and practice sessions will forever turn you away from traditional book study. And they’re far more fun. It makes sense to see some examples of the kind of training materials you’ll be using before you sign the purchase order. Always insist on instructor-led video demonstrations and interactive modules with audio-visual elements.
You should avoid purely online training. Always choose CD or DVD based study materials where possible, as you need to be able to use them whenever it’s convenient for you – ISP quality varies, so you don’t want to be totally reliant on a good broadband connection all the time.
One interesting way that training companies make a lot more is by charging for exams up-front and offering an exam guarantee. It looks impressive, but let’s just examine it more closely:
Certainly it isn’t free – you’re still footing the bill for it – it’s just been included in your package price. If it’s important to you to qualify first ‘go’, then the most successful route is to pay for one exam at a time, give it the necessary attention and give the task sufficient application.
Why should you pay a college early for exam fees? Find the best deal you can at the appropriate time, instead of paying any mark-up – and do it in a local testing centre – rather than possibly hours away from your area. Paying in advance for exams (and if you’re financing your study there’ll be interest on that) is insane. Resist being talked into filling the training company’s account with your hard-earned cash only to please their Bank Manager! Some will be pinning their hopes on the fact that you won’t get round to taking them – so they don’t need to pay for them. Re-takes of any failed exams through training companies with an ‘Exam Guarantee’ are monitored with tight restrictions. They’ll insist that you take mock exams first until you’ve demonstrated an excellent ability to pass.
Paying maybe a thousand pounds extra on an ‘Exam Guarantee’ is short-sighted – when study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is actually the key to your success.
Sometimes people think that the traditional school, college or university route is the right way even now. So why is commercial certification becoming more popular with employers? Vendor-based training (to use industry-speak) is far more specialised and product-specific. The IT sector has acknowledged that this level of specialised understanding is necessary to cope with an increasingly more technical world. Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA are the dominant players. In a nutshell, students are simply taught the necessary specifics in depth. It’s not quite as straightforward as that, but principally the objective has to be to cover the precise skills needed (alongside some required background) – without going into too much detail in all sorts of other things (as universities often do).
If an employer understands what they’re looking for, then they simply need to advertise for the exact skill-set required to meet that need. Vendor-based syllabuses are set to exacting standards and do not vary between trainers (in the way that degree courses can).
How can job security really exist anymore? In the UK for example, where business constantly changes its mind on a whim, it seems increasingly unlikely. Where there are growing skills shortfalls together with rising demand of course, we often discover a fresh type of market-security; driven by the constant growth conditions, businesses find it hard to locate enough staff.
The IT skills-gap around the United Kingdom is standing at approx 26 percent, according to the 2006 e-Skills survey. Therefore, for every 4 jobs that are available throughout the computer industry, employers can only source properly accredited workers for three of the four. Properly qualified and commercially certified new professionals are consequently at a complete premium, and it seems it will continue to be so for a long time. Without a doubt, now, more than ever, really is a critical time to retrain into the computer industry.
