IT Retraining Courses

Only one in ten people in the United Kingdom are happy with what they do for a living. Inevitably, huge numbers will just stay there. You’ve reached this paragraph, which if nothing else indicates that you’re considering or may be ready for a change.

Prior to considering individual courses, look for an advisor who will give you advice on which area will be right for you. Someone who can get to know your personality, and find out what types of work suit you:

* Do you enjoy a busy working environment? Is it meeting new people or being part of a team? Or you may prefer task-orientated work that you can complete alone?

* The banks and building sector are a little shaky at the moment, so which industry will answer your needs?

* Once you’ve qualified, would you like this skill to see you to retirement age?

* Are you confident that your industry training course will offer you employment opportunities, and have the ability to keep you in work up to the time you want to stop?

Think about Information Technology, that’s our recommendation - unusually, it’s one of the market sectors still on the grow in the UK and Europe. In addition, salaries and benefits exceed most other industries.

Traditional teaching in classrooms, utilising reference manuals and books, can be pretty hard going sometimes. If this describes you, dig around for more practical courses which have a majority of interactive, multimedia parts. Research has time and time again demonstrated that connecting physically with our study, is far more likely to produce long-lasting memories.

Search for a course where you’ll receive a library of CD or DVD ROM’s - you’ll start with videos of instructor demonstrations, and be able to fine-tune your skills in fully interactive practice sessions. It’s wise to view examples of the courseware provided before you hand over your cheque. What you want are instructor-led video demonstrations and audio-visual elements backed up by interactive lab’s.

Often, companies will only use just online versions of their training packages; and although this is okay the majority of the time, think what will happen when you don’t have access to the internet or you only get very a very slow connection sometimes. It’s preferable to have CD and DVD ROM materials which will solve that problem.

One feature provided by many trainers is job placement assistance. The service is put in place to assist your search for your first position. With the growing skills shortage in this country today, there’s no need to make too much of this option though. It isn’t such a complex operation to land the right work once you’re properly qualified.

Get your CV updated straight-away though - you should get plenty of help from your training provider on this. Don’t delay till you’ve finished your exams. It’s possible that you won’t have even passed your first exam when you’ll secure your initial junior support position; however this is not possible if your CV isn’t in front of employers. The top companies to get you a new position are generally local IT focused employment agencies. Because they get paid commission to place you, they have more incentive to get on with it.

A common aggravation of a number of training course providers is how much trainees are prepared to work to pass exams, but how un-prepared they are to work on getting the job they have trained for. Get out there and hustle - you might find it’s fun.

We’re regularly asked to explain why traditional academic studies are less in demand than the more commercial qualifications? Accreditation-based training (to use industry-speak) is far more specialised and product-specific. Industry has acknowledged that specialisation is vital to cope with a technologically complex marketplace. CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA dominate in this arena. University courses, for instance, can often get caught up in too much background study - with much too broad a syllabus. Students are then held back from getting enough core and in-depth understanding on a specific area.

Think about if you were the employer - and your company needed a person with some very particular skills. What’s the simplest way to find the right person: Trawl through loads of academic qualifications from hopeful applicants, trying to establish what they know and which commercial skills they’ve acquired, or choose a specific set of accreditations that exactly fulfil your criteria, and then choose your interviewees based around that. You can then focus on how someone will fit into the team at interview - rather than establishing whether they can do a specific task.

Only consider training programs that move onto industry accepted certifications. There are way too many minor schools promoting ‘in-house’ certificates which will prove unusable when it comes to finding a job. All the major commercial players like Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe have nationally acknowledged proficiency programs. Huge conglomerates such as these will make sure you’re employable.

You should remember: a actual training program or a qualification is not what you’re looking for; the particular job that you’re getting the training for is. A lot of colleges seem to put too much weight in the course or the qualification. It’s possible, in many cases, to get a great deal of enjoyment from a year of study but end up spending 10 or 20 years in a career that does nothing for you, simply because you did it without the correct research at the outset.

Prioritise understanding what industry will expect from you. What accreditations they will want you to have and how you’ll go about getting some commercial experience. You should also spend a little time assessing how far you’d like to get as it will often present a very specific set of certifications. It’s worth seeking help from someone that understands the industry you’ve chosen, and is able to give you ‘A day in the life of’ outline of what you actually do on the job. This really is absolutely essential because you obviously have to know whether or not you’ve chosen correctly.