Well done! Finding this article means you’re likely to be thinking about your future, and if training for a new career’s in your mind you’ve even now progressed more than the majority of people will. Can you believe that a small minority of us are satisfied and happy at work - but most won’t do a thing about it. Why not break free and make a start - don’t you think you deserve it.
On the subject of training, it’s important that you first make a list of what you want and don’t want from the position you would like to get. Be sure that you would be more satisfied before you put a lot of energy into changing the direction of your life. We recommend looking at the whole story first, to make the right judgements:
* Would you like to work with others? If you say yes, are you a team player or is meeting new people important to you? Maybe you’d rather be left alone to get on with things?
* What criteria are fundamentally important with regard to the sector of industry you’ll be employed in?
* After re-training, how long a career do you hope for, and will the industry provide you with that possibility?
* Will this new qualification make it easier to discover new employment possibilities, and be gainfully employed until your retirement plans kick in?
Think about Information Technology, it will be well worth your time - it’s one of the few market sectors still on the grow in the UK and Europe. In addition, salaries and benefits exceed most other industries.
A capable and specialised advisor (as opposed to a salesman) will ask questions and seek to comprehend your abilities and experience. This is useful for calculating your study start-point.
With a bit of real-world experience or certification, your starting-point of learning is very different to someone completely new.
Starting with a basic PC skills course first will sometimes be the most effective way to start into your computer programme, depending on your skill level at the moment.
Students often end up having issues because of a single training area which is often not even considered: How the training is broken down and couriered to your address.
You may think that it makes sense (with training often lasting 2 or 3 years for a full commercial certification,) for your typical trainer to courier the courseware in stages, until you’ve passed all the exams. But:
With thought, many trainees understand that the company’s ’standard’ path of training isn’t as suitable as another. Sometimes, a different order of study is more expedient. And what if you don’t get to the end within their exact timetable?
Ideally, you’d get ALL the training materials right at the beginning - so you’ll have them all to come back to in the future - whenever it suits you. You can also vary the order in which you complete each objective as and when something more intuitive seems right for you.
Starting from the viewpoint that it’s good to choose the job we want to do first, before we’re able to consider what educational program would meet that requirement, how do we decide on the right path?
Flicking through a list of odd-sounding and meaningless job titles is no use whatsoever. The majority of us have no concept what our next-door neighbours do at work each day - so we’re in the dark as to the intricacies of a specific IT job.
Deliberation over these different factors is most definitely required when you need to dig down the right answer for you:
* The sort of individual you think yourself to be - what kind of jobs you enjoy, and on the other side of the coin - what you definitely don’t enjoy.
* Why you want to consider stepping into Information Technology - is it to achieve a particular goal such as self-employment for example.
* Is the money you make further up on your wish list than other requirements.
* Learning what the normal career roles and markets are - and what makes them different.
* The time and energy you’ll set aside for getting qualified.
In these situations, it’s obvious that the only real way to seek advice on these issues tends to be through a good talk with an advisor who has years of experience in IT (and chiefly it’s commercial needs and requirements.)
Consider only training programmes that’ll move onto industry acknowledged accreditations. There are way too many small colleges proposing ‘in-house’ certificates which aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on when you start your job-search.
The top IT companies such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe all have globally acknowledged proficiency programmes. These heavyweights can make sure you stand out at interview.