Well Done! As you’re reading this article you’re probably toying with the idea of getting re-qualified for a new job – so you’ve already done more than most. Only one in ten of us are pleased to go to work each day, but most just moan and do nothing about it. You could join a select group who take responsibility for their future.

With regard to individual courses, discuss your thoughts with an industry expert who will give you advice on the right type of training for you. A person who will get an understanding of your personality, and find out what types of work suit you:

* Is working with other people your thing? Are you better with new people or those you know well? Or are you better with things that you can get on with on your own?

* Building and Banking are struggling right now, so think carefully about the sector that will be best for you?

* Once you’ve qualified, would you like your new abilities to take you through to retirement?

* Are you worried with regard to your chances of getting another job, and being gainfully employed all the way until retirement?

We would advise you to find out more about the IT industry – there are greater numbers of roles than people to do them, plus it’s a rare career choice where the industry is on the grow. Contrary to what some people believe, IT isn’t all techie people staring at their computers every day (if you like the sound of that though, they do exist.) The vast majority of roles are occupied by average folk who like receiving larger than average salaries.

Bearing in mind so much discussion on the area of computing technology nowadays, how can we appreciate what in particular to look for?

So many training providers focus completely on the certification process, and completely miss why you’re doing this – which is of course employment. Always start with the final destination in mind – don’t make the journey more important than where you want to get to. It’s common, in many cases, to get a great deal of enjoyment from a year of study and then find yourself trapped for decades in a job you hate, simply because you did it without some quality research at the outset.

Take time to understand your feelings on earning potential and career progression, and whether you intend to be quite ambitious. You need to know what will be expected of you, which particular qualifications are required and where you’ll pick-up experience from. It’s worth seeking help from someone that understands the sector you’ve chosen, and is able to give you ‘A day in the life of’ type of explanation for each job considered. All of these things are of paramount importance as you’ll need to know whether or not you’ve chosen correctly.

Ensure all your exams are commercially valid and current – forget courses that lead to in-house certificates. The main industry leaders such as Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA or Adobe each have globally recognised skills courses. These heavyweights will give some sparkle to your CV.

One thing you must always insist on is proper direct-access 24×7 support with professional mentors and instructors. It’s an all too common story to find providers that only seem to want to help while they’re in the office (9am till 6pm, Monday till Friday usually) and nothing at the weekends. Email support is too slow, and so-called telephone support is normally just routed to a call-centre which will take the information and email an instructor – who’ll call back sometime over the next 1-3 days, at a suitable time to them. This is not a lot of use if you’re stuck with a particular problem and only have a specific time you can study.

We recommend looking for colleges that utilise many support facilities across multiple time-zones. All of them should be combined to provide a single interface and 24×7 access, when it suits you, with no fuss. Find an educator that goes the extra mile. Because only live 24×7 support provides the necessary backup.

Students who consider this area of study often have a very practical outlook on work, and don’t always take well to classrooms, and struggling through thick study-volumes. If this is putting you off studying, try the newer style of interactive study, with on-screen demonstrations and labs. Many years of research has constantly verified that getting into our studies physically, is much more conducive to long-term memory.

Start a study-program in which you’ll receive a library of DVD-ROM’s – you’ll start with videos of instructor demonstrations, and be able to fine-tune your skills in fully interactive practice sessions. All companies must be pushed to demo some samples of the materials provided for study. Make sure you encounter videos of instructor-led classes and a wide selection of interactive elements.

Purely on-line training should be avoided. You want physical CD/DVD ROM course materials where possible, as you need to be able to use them whenever it’s convenient for you – ISP quality varies, so you don’t want to be totally reliant on a good broadband connection all the time.

One area often overlooked by trainees thinking about a course is the issue of ‘training segmentation’. Essentially, this is how the program is broken down into parts for timed release to you, which vastly changes how you end up. Many think it logical (with most training taking 1-3 years for a full commercial certification,) for your typical trainer to courier one section at a time, as you complete each part. However: Sometimes the steps or stages insisted on by the company won’t suit you. And what if you don’t finish each and every section within their timetable?

To provide the maximum security and flexibility, most students now choose to have all their training materials (which they’ve now paid for) sent immediately, and not in a piecemeal fashion. It’s then your own choice in which order and at what speed you want to finish things.

One interesting way that course providers make extra profits is by adding exam fees upfront to the cost of a course and offering an exam guarantee. It looks like a good deal, but let’s just examine it more closely:

Of course it’s not free – you are paying for it – it’s just been wrapped up in the price of the package. If it’s important to you to qualify first ‘go’, evidence suggests you must avoid exam guarantees and pay when entering exams, give it the priority it deserves and apply yourself as required.

Find the best exam deal or offer available when you’re ready, and keep hold of your own money. In addition, it’s then your choice where to do your exams – so you can choose somewhere closer to home. Why tie up your cash (or borrow more than you need) for examinations when you don’t need to? A great deal of money is made by companies charging all their exam fees up-front – and then hoping that you won’t take them all. The majority of companies will insist on pre-tests and hold you back from re-takes until you have proved to them you have a good chance of passing – which makes an ‘Exam Guarantee’ frankly useless.

Average exam fees were approximately 112 pounds twelve months or so ago via VUE or Pro-metric centres in the UK. So don’t be talked into shelling out hundreds or thousands of pounds more to get ‘Exam Guarantees’, when common sense dictates that what’s really needed is study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams.

The world of information technology is one of the more thrilling and changing industries that you could be a part of. Being up close and personal with technology puts you at the fore-front of developments shaping life over the next few decades. We’re only just starting to get a feel for how technology will define our world. Computers and the Internet will massively change the way we see and interrelate with the rest of the world over the years to come.

If earning a good living is way up on your list of priorities, then you will welcome the news that the average salary of a typical IT worker is a lot greater than salaries in other market sectors. There is a significant national demand for trained and qualified IT technicians. It follows that with the constant growth in the marketplace, it looks like this will be the case for the significant future.