Only one in ten people in the UK today are pleased and contented with their working life. The vast majority of course will do nothing about it. The reality of your getting here surely means that you’re considering or may be ready for a change.

When considering retraining, it’s vital that you have in mind what you want and don’t want from the job you’re hoping to qualify for. Ensure that things would be a lot better before you spend time and effort taking a new turn. We recommend looking at the big picture first, to make an informed decision:

* Do you see yourself dealing with people? Is that as part of a team or with a lot of new people? It could be working by yourself on specific tasks would be more your thing?

* Banking and building are facing difficulties at the moment, so which sector will be best for you?

* Is this the final time you envisage re-training, and if it is, do you believe this career choice will service that need?

* Do you think being qualified will allow you to find new work easily, and stay employable until sixty five?

We would advise you to have a good look at the IT sector – there are increasingly more jobs than people to do them, and it’s a rare career choice where the sector is growing. Despite what some people would have you think, it isn’t a bunch of techie geeks staring at their computers the whole time (though naturally some jobs are like that.) Most positions are filled by people like you and me who like receiving larger than average salaries.

With so much choice, there’s no surprise that a large majority of career changers don’t really understand the best career path they will follow. How likely is it for us to understand the day-to-day realities of any IT job when it’s an alien environment to us? Most likely we don’t know someone who is in that area at all. Achieving an informed resolution only comes through a meticulous examination of many altering areas:

* Personality factors plus what interests you – the sort of work-oriented areas you like and dislike.

* What length of time can you allocate for the training process?

* Where do you stand on salary vs the travel required?

* Some students don’t fully understand the time required to attain their desired level.

* You should also think long and hard about the level of commitment that you will set aside for your training.

To be honest, the only way to gain help on these areas tends to be through a good talk with someone that has years of experience in Information Technology (and specifically the commercial needs and requirements.)

Consider the points below very carefully if you believe the marketing blurb about ‘guaranteeing’ exams sounds like a benefit to the student:

These days, we are a little bit more aware of sales ploys – and generally we grasp that we’re actually paying for it (it’s not a freebie because they like us so much!) Should you seriously need to qualify first ‘go’, you must avoid exam guarantees and pay when entering exams, give it the necessary attention and give the task sufficient application.

Take your exams as locally as possible and don’t pay up-front, but seek out the best deal for you when you’re ready. A lot of questionable training companies make a great deal of profit by getting in the money for examinations upfront and hoping that you won’t take them all. Re-takes of previously unsuccessful exams via organisations who offer an ‘Exam Guarantee’ are monitored with tight restrictions. They’ll insist that you take mock exams first till you’ve proven conclusively that you can pass.

Exams taken at VUE and Prometric centres are around 112 pounds in Great Britain. What’s the point of paying huge fees for ‘exam guarantees’ (usually wrapped up in the course package price) – when a quality course, support and study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is what will really guarantee success.

A lot of men and women think that the state educational path is the way they should go. Why then are commercially accredited qualifications becoming more popular with employers? The IT sector is of the opinion that for mastery of skill sets for commercial use, official accreditation supplied for example by CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA is closer to the mark commercially – at a far reduced cost both money and time wise. University courses, for instance, clog up the training with vast amounts of background study – with much too broad a syllabus. This holds a student back from getting enough specific knowledge about the core essentials.

If an employer is aware what work they need doing, then they simply need to advertise for the particular skill-set required. Vendor-based syllabuses are set to meet an exact requirement and can’t change from one establishment to the next (in the way that degree courses can).

Often, trainers provide a shelf full of reference manuals. Obviously, this isn’t much fun and isn’t the best way to go about studying effectively. Research over recent years has always shown that an ‘involved’ approach to study, where we utilise all our senses, will more likely produce memories that are deeper and longer-lasting.

Fully interactive motion videos with demonstrations and practice sessions will beat books every time. And they’re a lot more fun to do. It would be silly not to view some of the typical study materials provided before you purchase a course. What you want are instructor demonstrations, video tutorials and interactive audio-visual sections with practice modules.

It is generally unwise to go for purely on-line training. With highly variable reliability and quality from most broadband providers, make sure you get physical media such as CD or DVD ROM’s.

If your advisor doesn’t ask you a lot of questions – it’s more than likely they’re really a salesperson. If they wade straight in with a specific product before looking at your personality and current experience level, then you know it’s true. Where you have a strong background, or perhaps a bit of live experience (maybe some existing accreditation?) then it’s likely the level you’ll need to start at will be quite dissimilar from someone who is just starting out. For students starting IT studies and exams for the first time, it can be helpful to break yourself in gently, kicking off with user-skills and software training first. This can easily be incorporated into most accreditation programs.