by Jason Kendall
Nice One! As you’re looking at this we guess you must be considering retraining for a new career – that means you’ve already taken one more step than the majority. Less of us than you’d think are happy and fulfilled in our work, but it’s rare anyone does more than moan. You could join a select group who make a difference in their lives.
When considering retraining, it’s vital that you have in mind what you want and don’t want from the job you’re hoping to qualify for. Ensure that things would be a lot better before you spend time and effort taking a new turn. We recommend looking at the big picture first, to make an informed decision:
* Do you want to interact with other people? If so, do you like working with the same people or do you want to meet lots of new people? Maybe you’d rather be left alone to get on with things?
* Which criteria’s are fundamental with regard to the industry you’ll be employed in?
* Is this the final time you envisage re-training, and if it is, do you believe this career choice will service that need?
* Do you think being qualified will allow you to find new work easily, and stay employable until sixty five?
We would advise you to have a good look at the IT sector – there are increasingly more jobs than people to do them, and it’s a rare career choice where the sector is growing. Despite what some people would have you think, it isn’t a bunch of techie geeks staring at their computers the whole time (though naturally some jobs are like that.) Most positions are filled by people like you and me who like receiving larger than average salaries.
Looking around, we find an excess of employment in computing. Arriving at the correct choice in this uncertainty is a mammoth decision. Because with no commercial skills in computing, how should we possibly be expected to understand what a particular job actually consists of? Often, the key to unlocking this issue properly comes from a full talk over a variety of topics:
* Personality factors plus what interests you – the sort of work-oriented areas you like and dislike.
* Are you aiming to reach a key goal – for instance, working from home in the near future?
* Where do you stand on salary vs the travel required?
* Learning what typical job areas and sectors are – plus how they’re different to each other.
* The level of commitment and effort you’ll commit getting qualified.
To bypass the barrage of jargon, and find what’ll really work for you, have an informal chat with an experienced professional; someone that appreciates and can explain the commercial realities while explaining each accreditation.
A sneaky way that colleges make more money is by adding exam fees upfront to the cost of a course and presenting it as a guarantee for your exams. It looks impressive, but is it really:
Of course it isn’t free – you’re still footing the bill for it – the price has simply been included in the whole thing. People who take each progressive exam, funding them as they go are much better placed to get through first time. They’re mindful of what they’ve paid and take the necessary steps to make sure they’re ready.
Take your exams as locally as possible and don’t pay up-front, but seek out the best deal for you when you’re ready. A lot of questionable training companies make a great deal of profit by getting in the money for examinations upfront and hoping that you won’t take them all. Re-takes of previously unsuccessful exams via organisations who offer an ‘Exam Guarantee’ are monitored with tight restrictions. They’ll insist that you take mock exams first till you’ve proven conclusively that you can pass.
Exams taken at VUE and Prometric centres are around 112 pounds in Great Britain. What’s the point of paying huge fees for ‘exam guarantees’ (usually wrapped up in the course package price) – when a quality course, support and study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is what will really guarantee success.
Commercial qualifications are now, very visibly, taking over from the more academic tracks into the industry – but why has this come about? Key company training (as it’s known in the industry) is most often much more specialised. The IT sector has acknowledged that a specialist skill-set is what’s needed to service the demands of a technologically complex marketplace. Microsoft, CompTIA, CISCO and Adobe are the dominant players. In a nutshell, the learning just focuses on what’s actually required. Actually, it’s not quite as pared down as that, but the most important function is always to concentrate on the fundamentally important skill-sets (alongside some required background) – without trying to cram in all sorts of other things (as universities often do).
The bottom line is: Accredited IT qualifications let employers know exactly what you’re capable of – everything they need to know is in the title: as an example – I am a ‘Microsoft Certified Professional’ in ‘Windows XP Administration and Configuration’. Therefore an employer can look at the particular needs they have and which qualifications will be suitable to deal with those needs.
Often, trainers provide a shelf full of reference manuals. Obviously, this isn’t much fun and isn’t the best way to go about studying effectively. Research over recent years has always shown that an ‘involved’ approach to study, where we utilise all our senses, will more likely produce memories that are deeper and longer-lasting.
Fully interactive motion videos with demonstrations and practice sessions will beat books every time. And they’re a lot more fun to do. It would be silly not to view some of the typical study materials provided before you purchase a course. What you want are instructor demonstrations, video tutorials and interactive audio-visual sections with practice modules.
Plump for physical media such as CD or DVD ROM’s in all circumstances. You can then avoid all the difficulties of broadband outages, failure and signal quality issues etc.
Get rid of any salesman who pushes one particular program without performing a ‘fact-find’ to assess your abilities as well as experience level. Always check they have access to a large range of products so they can solve your training issues. It’s worth remembering, if you have some relevant previous certification, then it’s not unreasonable to expect to commence studying further along than someone who is new to the field. Opening with a basic PC skills course first may be the ideal way to commence your computer programme, but really depends on your level of familiarity with computers.
About the Author:
(C) Jason Kendall. Check out LearningLolly.com for quality career advice on
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