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.
Before you make decisions on individual training courses, seek out someone who can help you sort out which area will be right for you. Someone who can get a feel for your personality, and find out the best career for you to work towards:
* Are you hoping to be involved with others in the workplace? Would that be with the same people or with a lot of new people? It could be working by yourself with your own methodology may be your preference?
* What thoughts do you have regarding the industry you hope to work in?
* Once you’ve qualified, would you like your new abilities to serve you till you retire?
* Are you happy that the training program you’ve chosen will make you employable, and offer the chance to keep you in work until your pension kicks in?
We would advise you to really explore the IT sector – there are a larger number of roles than employees, plus it’s a rare career choice where the sector is expanding. In contrast to what some people believe, IT isn’t all techie people looking at screens the whole day (though naturally some jobs are like that.) Most positions are taken by people like you and me who enjoy better than average salaries.
An area that’s often missed by new students considering a training program is the issue of ‘training segmentation’. Basically, this means the way the course is divided up to be delivered to you, which completely controls what you end up with.
Delivery by courier of each element stage by stage, as you complete each module is the typical way that your program will arrive. This sounds logical, but you might like to consider this:
What happens when you don’t complete every single exam? Maybe the prescribed order won’t suit you? Because of nothing that’s your fault, you may not meet the required timescales and therefore not end up with all the modules.
To provide the maximum security and flexibility, it’s normal for most trainees to make sure that every element of their training is couriered out in one package, all at the beginning. It’s then up to you in what order and how fast or slow you’d like to work.
Trainees looking to kick off a career in IT generally have no idea of what direction they should take, let alone what area to build their qualifications around.
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:
* What hobbies you have and enjoy – often these define what areas will satisfy you.
* 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.
* How much effort you’ll commit getting qualified.
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.
It’s possible, in some situations, to obtain tremendous satisfaction from a year of studying and then find yourself trapped for decades in a job you hate, simply because you did it without some decent due-diligence at the beginning.
Make sure you investigate how you feel about 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, what particular accreditations will be required and how to develop your experience.
Seek guidance and advice from an experienced industry professional, even if you have to pay a small fee – it’s usually much cheaper and safer to discover early on whether your choices are appropriate, instead of finding out after two full years that the job you’ve chosen is not for you and now need to go back to square one.
The somewhat scary thought of getting your first role in IT can be made easier by some companies, via a Job Placement Assistance facility. Because of the great shortage of skills in Britain right now, there’s no need to make too much of this option though. It’s not as difficult as you may be led to believe to find the right work once you’re trained and certified.
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.
Getting your CV considered is more than not being regarded at all. A decent number of junior positions are given to students (sometimes when they’ve only just got going.)
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 Scott Edwards. Visit CLICK HERE or How To Choose A Career.