Good for you! Hitting upon this feature suggests you’re contemplating your career, and if it’s re-training you’re considering you’ve even now progressed more than the majority of people will. It’s a frightening thought that surprisingly few of us are satisfied and happy at work - but the majority will just put up with it. We implore you to liberate yourself and move forward - you have the rest of your life to enjoy it.
When looking at training, it’s essential to first define your requirements from the job you’re hoping to qualify for. It’s important to discover if things would be a lot better before you put a lot of energy into re-directing your life. We recommend looking at the whole story first, to avoid disappointment:
* Do you like to be around others at work? Are you better with new people or those you know well? Or you may prefer task-orientated work that you deal with by yourself?
* Have you given much thought to which sector you could be employed in? (Post credit crunch, it’s more important than ever to choose carefully.)
* Is this the final time you plan to retrain, and therefore, do you suppose your new career will offer that choice?
* Are you worried about the chance of new employment opportunities, and being in demand in the employment market all the way until retirement?
We would advise that your number one choice is the IT sector - everyone knows that it’s getting bigger. IT isn’t all techie people staring at computers the whole time - naturally there are those roles, but the majority of roles are carried out by people like you and me who get on very well.
Often, students don’t think to check on something of absolutely vital importance - how their company divides up the physical training materials, and into how many bits.
Normally, you will purchase a course taking 1-3 years and get sent one module each time you pass an exam. It seems to make sense on one level, but consider these issues:
How would they react if you didn’t complete everything at the required speed? Often the prescribed exam order doesn’t come as naturally as another different route may.
To be in the best situation you would have all the learning modules sent to you right at the start; every single thing! This way, nothing can happen down the line which could affect your capability of finishing.
Looking at the myriad of choice out there, is it any wonder that the majority of newcomers to the industry have no idea which career they will follow.
Working through a list of odd-sounding and meaningless job titles is no use whatsoever. The vast majority of us don’t even know what the neighbours do for a living - so we have no hope of understanding the intricacies of a particular IT career.
Consideration of the following areas is important when you need to expose the right answers:
* Personality plays an important role - what gets you ‘up and running’, and what are the areas that ruin your day.
* Are you looking to achieve a key aim - for example, working from home sometime soon?
* What salary and timescale requirements you may have?
* Considering all that computing covers, it’s a requirement that you can absorb what is different.
* You’ll also need to think hard about the amount of time and effort you’ll put into gaining your certifications.
The bottom line is, the best way of investigating all this is by means of a good talk with an experienced advisor that has enough background to provide solid advice.
A typical blunder that many potential students make is to look for the actual course to take, and take their eye off where they want to get to. Training academies are stacked to the hilt with unaware students who chose a course based on what sounded good - rather than what would get them their end-goal of a job they enjoyed.
You may train for one year and then end up performing the job-role for decades. Ensure you avoid the fatal error of finding what seems like an ‘interesting’ course and then spend decades in a job you hate!
You’ll want to understand the exact expectations industry will have. What certifications they will want you to have and how you’ll go about getting some commercial experience. It’s also worth spending time setting guidelines as to how far you think you’ll want to build your skill-set as often it can force you to choose a particular set of certifications.
Speak to a professional advisor that has a background in the industry you’re considering, and who’ll explain to you an in-depth explanation of what you’re going to be doing in that job. Researching these areas long before beginning a training course will save you both time and money.
A useful feature offered by some training providers is a Job Placement Assistance program. The service is put in place to steer you into your first IT role. Ultimately it’s not as difficult as you may be led to believe to secure your first job - as long as you’ve got the necessary skills and qualifications; employers in this country need your skills.
You would ideally have help and assistance with preparing a CV and getting interviews though; and we’d encourage everyone to bring their CV up to date as soon as they start a course - don’t delay till you’ve finished your exams.
It’s not uncommon to find that junior support jobs have been bagged by students who’re still on their course and haven’t even passed a single exam yet. This will at least 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 you’ll often find that a specialist independent regional recruitment consultant or service can generally serve you better than a national service, due to the fact that they’re far more likely to be familiar with the jobs that are going locally.
A common aggravation of some training companies is how hard students are prepared to study to become certified, but how un-prepared they are to work on getting the role they have acquired skills for. Get out there and hustle - you might find it’s fun.
Copyright 2009 S. Edwards. Try How To Choose A Career or Click HERE.