Choosing IT Training – Insights
June 21, 2009 by Jason Kendall
Filed under Online Trainings
Well done! Hitting upon this feature suggests you’re thinking about your future, and if it’s re-training you’re considering you’ve even now progressed more than the majority of people will. Are you aware that hardly any of us describe ourselves as contented at work – but most will do absolutely nothing about it. We encourage you to break free and make a start – don’t you think you deserve it.
It’s in your interests that prior to beginning any study program, you have a conversation with someone who can see the bigger picture and can give you advice. They can look at aspects of your personality and help you sort out a role to fit you:
* Do you want to interact with other people? If so, do you like working with the same people or are you more comfortable dealing with strangers? Alternatively, do you like to deal with your responsibilities alone?
* What thoughts are fundamental when considering the market sector you’ll be employed in?
* Is this the final time you want to study, and based on that, will this new career allow you to do that?
* Would it be useful for your study to be in an area where you’re comfortable your chances of gainful employment are high until retirement?
We ask you to really explore Information Technology – there are more jobs than people to do them, because it’s one of the few choices of career where the market sector is growing. Despite the opinions of certain people, IT is not full of nerdy individuals looking at screens the whole time (though those jobs exist.) Most positions are filled by ordinary people who enjoy a very nice lifestyle due to better than average wages.
OK, why should we consider commercially accredited qualifications and not the usual academic qualifications taught at tech’ colleges and universities? Industry is of the opinion that for mastery of skill sets for commercial use, the right accreditation from such organisations as Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA often is more effective in the commercial field – and a fraction of the cost and time. Higher education courses, for example, often get bogged down in too much loosely associated study – with much too broad a syllabus. Students are then prevented from learning the core essentials in sufficient depth.
Think about if you were the employer – and you required somebody who had very specific skills. What should you do: Pore through loads of academic qualifications from hopeful applicants, asking for course details and what workplace skills they have, or pick out specific commercial accreditations that perfectly fit your needs, and draw up from that who you want to speak to. You’ll then be able to concentrate on getting a feel for the person at interview – rather than on the depth of their technical knowledge.
Remember: the training program or the accreditation is not what you’re looking for; the particular job that you want is. Too many training companies put too much weight in just the training course. You could be training for only a year and end up doing the job for 20 years. Avoid the mistake of taking what may be a very ‘interesting’ program only to waste your life away with a job you hate!
Make sure you investigate your leanings around career progression and earning potential, plus your level of ambition. It makes sense to understand what (if any) sacrifices you’ll need to make for a particular role, which qualifications they want you to have and where you’ll pick-up experience from. Before setting out on a study course, it’s good advice to chat over the exact market needs with a professional advisor, in order to be sure the retraining course covers all the necessary elements.
Ensure all your qualifications are current and commercially required – don’t even consider courses which provide certificates that are worthless because they’re ‘in-house’. From a commercial standpoint, only top businesses such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe (as an example) really carry any commercial clout. Anything less just doesn’t cut the mustard.
The way a programme is physically sent to you is often missed by many students. How many stages do they break the program into? And in what order and at what speed is it delivered? Usually, you’ll enrol on a course that takes between and 1 and 3 years and get sent one module each time you pass an exam. This sounds logical on one level, until you consider this: What if you find the order offered by the provider doesn’t suit. What if you find it hard to complete all the elements within their timetable?
Ideally, you’d get ALL the training materials right at the beginning – meaning you’ll have all of them to return to any point – irrespective of any schedule. Variations can then be made to the order that you attack each section if you find another route more intuitive.
Don’t accept anything less than the latest Microsoft (or relevant organisation’s) authorised exam preparation and simulation materials. Due to the fact that many IT examining boards come from the United States, you must be prepared for the way exams are phrased. It’s not sufficient just answering any old technical questions – they need to be in the proper exam format. Simulated exams are very useful for confidence building – so that when you come to take the proper exam, you don’t get uptight.
