A very small number of men and women in this country are happy with what they do for a living. Inevitably, huge numbers won't do a thing. The fact that you've got this far at a minimum suggests that you've realised change must come.

With regard to individual courses, seek out someone who can talk you through the right type of training for you. An advisor who will take time to get an understanding of your personality, and discover what type of job will be right for you:

* Do you see yourself dealing with people? Would that be with a small 'tightly-knit' team or with a lot of new people? Maybe working on your own on specific tasks may be your preference?

* Have you given much thought to which area you would be suited to? (These days, it's more important than ever to get it right.)

* Is this the final time you envisage re-training, and based on that, will your chosen career path offer that choice?

* Do you feel uncomfortable about your possibilities of getting new work, and being gainfully employed until you plan to retire?

It would be an idea for you to really explore the IT sector - there are greater numbers of jobs than staff to fill them, plus it's one of the few choices of career where the industry is growing. Despite what some people would have you think, IT is not full of nerdy individuals lost in their PC's the whole day (though those jobs exist.) The majority of jobs are done by people like you and me who want to earn a very good living.

Only consider retraining programmes which grow into commercially approved qualifications. There's an endless list of minor schools promoting unknown 'in-house' certificates that are essentially useless in the real world. Unless your qualification is issued by a major player like Microsoft, Adobe, CompTIA or Cisco, then it's likely it could have been a waste of time and effort - because it won't give an employer any directly-useable skills.

Proper support should never be taken lightly - look for a package offering 24x7 direct access to instructors, as anything less will not satisfy and will also hamper your progress. Try and find training where you can receive help at any time of day or night (even if it's early hours on Sunday morning!) Make sure it's always access directly to professional tutors, and not access to a call-in service which takes messages - so you're waiting for tutors to call you back at a convenient time for them.

Be on the lookout for training programs that utilise many support facilities active in different time-zones. Every one of them needs to be seamlessly combined to provide a single interface together with access round-the-clock, when it suits you, with no hassle. Don't under any circumstances take less than this. Online 24x7 support is really your only option with IT study. It's possible you don't intend to study late evenings; usually though, we're out at work while the support is live.

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