It’s really great that you’ve already got this far! Just ten percent of people enjoy their work and find it stimulating, but most of us complain to each other and do nothing. The fact that you’re here means it’s probable that you’ve a personal interest in re-training, so even now you’re ahead of the game. Now you just need to discover where you want to go and get going.
On the subject of training, it’s important to initially know your expectations from the position you’re hoping to qualify for. Ensure that things would be a lot better before you spend time and effort re-directing your life. We recommend looking at the whole story first, to steer clear of regrets:
* Do you like to work collaborating with people? Would that be with a small ‘tightly-knit’ team or with a lot of new people? Perhaps working alone in isolation would be more your thing?
* Are you considering which area you could be employed in? (Post credit crunch, it’s essential to be selective.)
* Once you’ve trained, how many years work do anticipate working, and can the industry you choose offer you that opportunity?
* Is it important for your retraining to be in a market sector where you’re comfortable your chances of gainful employment are high until your pension kicks in?
Don’t overlook the IT industry, it will be well worth your time - you’ll find it’s one of the only growth areas in this country and overseas. Another benefit is that remuneration packages are much better than most.
A typical blunder that students everywhere can make is to focus entirely on getting a qualification, rather than starting with where they want to get to. Colleges are brimming over with direction-less students that chose an ‘interesting’ course - instead of what would yield the career they desired.
It’s unfortunate, but the majority of trainees start out on programs that sound marvellous in the sales literature, but which gets us a career that doesn’t satisfy. Talk to many university graduates to see what we mean.
Take time to understand your leanings around earning potential, career development, plus your level of ambition. You should understand what industry expects from you, what exams will be required and how to develop your experience.
We advise all students to speak to a skilled professional before deciding on their retraining programme. This gives some measure of assurance that it contains the relevant skills for the chosen career.
Authorised exam simulation and preparation software is vital - and absolutely ought to be offered by your training company.
Make sure that the simulated exams are not just posing the correct questions from the right areas, but are also posing them in the way that the actual final exam will formulate them. This can really throw some people if they’re faced with unrecognisable phrases and formats.
Mock exams will prove invaluable for confidence building - so when it comes to taking the real deal, you will be much more relaxed.
Most of us would love to think that our jobs are safe and our work prospects are protected, but the growing likelihood for the majority of jobs around the UK today is that security just isn’t there anymore.
Security only exists now through a quickly escalating marketplace, driven forward by a shortfall of trained staff. It’s this alone that creates the correct setting for a secure marketplace - a far better situation.
Offering the Information Technology (IT) business as an example, a recent e-Skills analysis demonstrated major skills shortages in the country around the 26 percent mark. Put directly, we only have the national capacity to fill just 3 out of every four jobs in the computing industry.
This single idea on its own is the backbone of why Great Britain desperately needs considerably more new trainees to join the Information Technology market.
Because the IT sector is developing at such a quick pace, there really isn’t any other sector worth considering for a new future.
If an advisor doesn’t ask you a lot of questions - it’s likely they’re actually nothing more than a salesman. If they wade straight in with a specific product before getting to know your background and whether you have any commercial experience, then it’s very likely to be the case.
An important point to note is that, if you have some relevant previous certification, then you can sometimes expect to begin at a different level to a trainee with no history to speak of.
If this is going to be your initial attempt at studying to take an IT exam then it may be wise to start out with some basic Microsoft package and Windows skills first.