Microsoft SQL Career Training And Study At Home
May 11, 2009 by Jason Kendall
Filed under Online Trainings
Should you be looking for certified training from Microsoft, then you’ll naturally expect training providers to provide a large selection of the best training programs on the market today. You might like to talk about career options with a training advisor – and should you be confused, then take counsel on whereabouts in industry would be right for you, based on your personality and ability level. Training courses must be tailored to meet your needs. Therefore, once you’ve decided on the best kind of work for you, you’ll then need to look at what is the most suitable program to get you there.
Which questions should we be asking to take onboard the understanding we need? After all, it looks like there are some somewhat superb opportunities for us all to look at.
A proficient and specialised consultant (vs a salesman) will talk through your current situation. This is useful for working out your study start-point. With a little commercial experience or qualifications, you could discover that your appropriate starting-point is now at a different level to a new student. It’s usual to start with user-skills and software training first. It can brush up on your current abilities and make the slope up to the higher-levels a little less steep.
One of the most important things to insist on has to be full 24×7 support with professional mentors and instructors. Far too often we see trainers who only seem to want to help while they’re in the office (9am till 6pm, Monday till Friday usually) and nothing at the weekends. Find a good quality service where you can access help at any time you choose (even 1am on Sunday morning!) You want direct-access to qualified mentors and tutors, and not simply some messaging service that means you’re parked in a queue of others waiting to be called back – probably during office hours.
If you look properly, you’ll find professional training packages who give students online support all the time – including evenings, nights and weekends. Don’t under any circumstances take a lower level of service. 24×7 support is really your only option with IT learning. Perhaps you don’t intend to study during the evenings; but for most of us, we’re out at work at the time when most support is available.
It’s likely that you’re a practical sort of person – a ‘hands-on’ personality type. Typically, the unfortunate chore of reading reference guides is something you’ll make yourself do if you have to, but it doesn’t suit your way of doing things. Check out video-based multimedia instruction if books just don’t do it for you. Many studies have proved that we remember much more when all our senses are involved, and we put into practice what we’ve been studying.
Find a course where you’ll get a host of CD or DVD ROM’s – you’ll start with videos of instructor demonstrations, followed by the chance to use virtual lab’s to practice your new skills. Don’t take any chances and look at some of the typical study materials provided before you sign the purchase order. The minimum you should expect would be videoed instructor demonstrations and interactive audio-visual sections with practice modules.
Choose physical media such as CD or DVD ROM’s every time. You can then avoid all the difficulties of the variability of broadband quality and service.
An important area that is sometimes not even considered by those weighing up a particular programme is the concept of ‘training segmentation’. This is essentially how the program is broken down into parts for drop-shipping to you, which can make a dramatic difference to what you end up with. Normally, you will join a program staged over 2 or 3 years and get posted one section at a time – from one exam to the next. It seems to make sense on one level, but consider these issues: What happens when you don’t complete every section? What if you don’t find their order of learning is ideal for you? Due to no fault of yours, you may not meet the required timescales and not receive all the modules you’ve paid for.
An ideal situation would be to have every piece of your study pack packed off to your home before you even start; the entire thing! Then, nothing can hinder your ability to finish.
A sneaky way that colleges make extra profits is via an ‘exam inclusive’ package and then including an ‘Exam Guarantee’. It looks impressive, but let’s just examine it more closely:
We all know that we’re still paying for it – it’s not so hard to see that it’s been added into the overall figure from the training provider. Certainly, it’s not a freebie – don’t think these companies are so generous with their money! Should you seriously need to get a first time pass, you must fund each exam as you take it, focus on it intently and apply yourself as required.
Take your exams at a local pro-metric testing centre and find the best deal for you at the time. Many questionable training providers secure huge amounts of money because they’re getting in the money for all the exam fees up-front then hoping either that you won’t take them, or it will be a long time before you do. It’s worth noting, with ‘Exam Guarantees’ from most places – the company controls how often and when you can re-take the exam. They’ll only allow a re-take once completely satisfied.
Exams taken at local centres are in the region of 112 pounds in this country. Students should be very wary of forking out hundreds of pounds extra in ‘Exam Guarantee’ costs (most often hidden in the package) – when the best course materials, the right level of support and study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is what will really guarantee success.
The sometimes daunting task of securing your first computer related job is often eased by some training providers because they offer a Job Placement Assistance facility. Don’t get overly impressed with this service – it’s quite easy for eager sales people to overplay it. At the end of the day, the massive skills shortage in Britain is what will make you attractive to employers.
However, avoid waiting until you have qualified before polishing up your CV. The day you start training, list what you’re working on and place it on jobsites! A good number of junior support jobs are offered to people who are still learning and have still to get qualified. At least this will get your CV into the ‘possible’ pile and not the ‘no’ pile. If it’s important to you to find work near your home, then it’s quite likely that a specialist independent regional recruitment consultant or service might work much better for you than a national service, for they are much more inclined to have insider knowledge of what’s available near you.
Essentially, as long as you focus the same level of energy into finding your first job as into training, you’re not likely to experience problems. Some people curiously spend hundreds of hours on their course materials and do nothing more once they’ve got certified and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.
Huge changes are washing over technology over the next few decades – and it becomes more and more thrilling each day. Computing technology and connections via the web will noticeably affect the direction of our lives over the coming years; overwhelmingly so.
A standard IT technician over this country as a whole will also get a lot more than fellow workers in much of the rest of the economy. Mean average remuneration packages are some of the best to be had nationwide. Experts agree that there’s a considerable nationwide need for professionally qualified IT workers. And as the industry constantly develops, it appears this pattern will continue for quite some time to come.