In the fast-paced world we live in, support workers who are qualified to fix networks and PC’s, plus give daily solutions to users, are indispensable in every sector of the business environment. Our country’s need for better skilled and qualified individuals is enhanced, as society becomes ever more dependent on PC’s in today’s environment.
Many companies are all about the certification, and completely miss what you actually need – which is a commercial career or job. Your focus should start with the final destination in mind – don’t make the journey more important than where you want to get to.
Imagine training for just one year and then end up doing a job for a lifetime. Don’t make the mistake of taking what may be an ‘interesting’ training program and then put 10-20 years into a job you hate!
Prioritise understanding the exact expectations industry will have. Which particular certifications you’ll be required to have and in what way you can gain some industry experience. It’s definitely worth spending time thinking about how far you wish to progress your career as it will often control your selection of exams.
Take advice from an experienced professional, even if there’s a fee involved – it’s considerably cheaper and safer to discover early on whether something is going to suit and interest you, rather than find out following two years of study that you’ve picked the wrong track and now need to go back to square one.
With so much choice, there’s no surprise that nearly all career changers don’t really understand the best career path they will follow.
I mean, if you don’t have any understanding of the IT sector, how could you possibly know what someone in a particular field does each day? How can you possibly choose what educational path will be most suitable for success.
Often, the key to unlocking this issue in the best manner comes from a deep discussion of several different topics:
* Personality plays a significant role – what things get your juices flowing, and what are the things that you really dislike.
* For what reasons you’re getting involved with computing – it could be you’re looking to achieve a life-long goal like being self-employed for instance.
* How highly do you rate salary – is it very important, or is day-to-day enjoyment a little higher on your priority-list?
* Understanding what the main IT types and markets are – and what differentiates them.
* The time and energy you’ll commit your training.
For most people, dissecting these areas will require meeting with an experienced pro who can explain things properly. And we don’t just mean the accreditations – but also the commercial expectations and needs of the market as well.
A lot of students think that the tech college or university system is the way they should go. So why then are commercially accredited qualifications beginning to overtake it?
Corporate based study (in industry terminology) is most often much more specialised. Industry is aware that a specialist skill-set is what’s needed to handle an acceleratingly technical commercial environment. CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA dominate in this arena.
The training is effectively done through concentrating on the actual skills required (together with a relevant amount of related knowledge,) rather than covering masses of the background detail and ‘fluff’ that academic courses can often find themselves doing – to fill a three or four year course.
When it comes down to the nitty-gritty: Recognised IT certifications tell an employer precisely what skills you have – the title is a complete giveaway: as an example – I am a ‘Microsoft Certified Professional’ in ‘Managing and Maintaining Windows Server 2003′. Therefore an employer can look at the particular needs they have and which qualifications are required to fulfil that.
Students will sometimes miss checking on a painfully important area – how their training provider divides up the training materials, and into how many separate packages.
Training companies will normally offer a program spread over 1-3 years, and deliver each piece one-by-one as you pass each exam. On the surface this seems reasonable – until you consider the following:
Students often discover that their providers standard order of study isn’t ideal for them. They might find it’s more expedient to use an alternative order of study. And what happens if they don’t finish inside of the expected timescales?
Ideally, you want ALL the study materials up-front – giving you them all to return to any point – whenever it suits you. This allows a variation in the order that you attack each section as and when something more intuitive seems right for you.
(C) 2010 – S. Edwards. Go to www.MCSE2008-4PC.co.uk or www.DatabaseCourse4IT.co.uk.
