Congratulations! Discovering this piece proves you must be contemplating your career, and if training for a new career’s in your mind then you’ve already got further than most others. Can you believe that a small minority of us are satisfied and happy at work – but the majority won’t do a thing about it. We implore you to break free and make a start – don’t you think you deserve it.

We suggest that you discuss your ideas first – talk to someone who’s familiar with your chosen field; an advisor who can get to the bottom of what you’ll like in a job, and offer only the learning programs which will get you there:

* Do you hope for interaction with others? If so, do you like working with the same people or are you more comfortable dealing with strangers? Alternatively, do you like to deal with your responsibilities alone?

* Have you given much thought to which area you choose to work in? (In this economy, it’s even more crucial to get it right.)

* How long a career do you hope to have once retrained, and will the market sector offer you that opportunity?

* Do you have the assurance that the training program you’ve chosen is commercially viable, and will provide the facility to work right up to the time you want to stop?

The biggest industry in the UK that fulfils the above criteria is Information Technology. There is a requirement for greater numbers of qualified staff in IT, simply have a look at a local jobsite and you will find them yourself. Don’t let people tell you it’s only geeky nerds sitting in front ofscreens all day – there’s a lot more to it than that. Large numbers of the people in the computer industry are just like you and me, and they have very interesting and well paid jobs.

If you’re considering a training academy that still provides ‘in-centre’ days as a feature of their programme, then take note of these problems experienced by almost all students:

* Loads of driving back and forth from the training centre – normally 100’s of miles.

* Asking for frequent time off work – many training providers will only provide availability during weekdays – typically grouping 2 or 3 days together. This is generally difficult for those of us who work for a living, and it’s made more problematic if you include the travel time on top.

* And let’s not overlook lost vacation time. Most of us have 4 weeks annual leave. If at least half is sacrificed to learning, then it doesn’t leave much for us and our families.

* ‘In-Centre’ workshop days can get way too big.

* Workshop pace – workshops usually consist of students of varied skill, consequently tension can run high between students with more background knowledge and the ones who need a little longer.

* Let’s not disregard the added expense of driving or bed and breakfast for the night either. This may well run to many hundreds of pounds more – sometimes thousands. Take some time to add it all up – it’ll shock and surprise you.

* We all enjoy our privacy. We don’t want to risk throwing away any potential advancement that we’re owed while we retrain.

* Posing questions in front of other class-mates will often make any one of us feel nervous. Have you ever left a question un-asked just because you didn’t want to look foolish?

* Living away for part of your working week – a lot of students have to work or live away for part of the program. Events are very difficult then, unfortunately the monies have already been handed over as part of your fees.

It would be better to simply watch and study with industry specialists one-to-one through pre-made modules, studying them when it suits you – not somebody else.

You could study at home on your PC or use your laptop to enjoy the sun. Any questions; then utilise the 24×7 Support (that we hope you’ll insist on with any technical courses.)

All the lessons can be repeated at any time you need to brush up – memory is aided by repetition. And note-taking is a thing of the past – it’s already laid on for you.

Could it get any simpler: No wasted time or money, travelling is avoided; and you end up with a more comfortable study setting.

Considering the amount of options that are available, is it any wonder that the majority of trainees don’t really understand the best career path they will follow.

Flicking through a list of odd-sounding and meaningless job titles is next to useless. Most of us don’t really appreciate what our next-door neighbours do at work each day – so what chance do we have in understanding the intricacies of a specific IT job.

Arriving at the right conclusion will only come from a meticulous analysis of several varying key points:

* Which type of person you consider yourself to be – what kind of jobs you really enjoy, plus of course – what you definitely don’t enjoy.

* Why it seems right stepping into Information Technology – is it to overcome some personal goal such as being your own boss for instance.

* Does salary have a higher place on your priority-list than some other areas.

* There are many markets to choose from in IT – it’s wise to get some key facts on what separates them.

* It’s wise to spend some time thinking about what kind of effort and commitment you’ll put into your training.

For the average person, getting to the bottom of each of these concepts tends to require the help of a professional who can explain things properly. And we don’t just mean the qualifications – but also the commercial requirements and expectations also.

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With an abundance of IT courses to be had, it can be difficult to find the right one. Find one that’s on a par with your character and abilities, and that’s in demand in the working environment.

Why not try user skills courses, or take a career track and specialise. Plain speaking courses will set you on the right track to achieve your goals.

By utilising modern training techniques and keeping costs to a minimum, there is a new type of course provider supplying a superior brand of teaching and assistance for hundreds of pounds less.

Have you recently questioned how safe your job is? For most of us, this isn’t an issue until something dramatic happens to shake us. But in today’s marketplace, the painful truth is that job security doesn’t really exist anymore, for the vast majority of people.

Of course, a marketplace with high growth, where staff are in constant demand (because of a growing shortfall of trained people), provides a market for proper job security.

Looking at the Information Technology (IT) industry, a recent e-Skills study brought to light an over 26 percent shortfall of skilled workers. This shows that for every 4 jobs existing across computing, there are only 3 trained people to perform that task.

This troubling certainty reveals the requirement for more appropriately accredited computer professionals in the country.

In actuality, seeking in-depth commercial IT training during the next few years is almost definitely the greatest career choice you could ever make.

Review the points below in detail if you’ve been persuaded that that over-used sales technique about examination guarantees seems like a good idea:

Obviously it’s not free – you are paying for it – it’s just been wrapped up in the price of the package.

Should you seriously need to qualify first ‘go’, then the most successful route is to pay for each exam as you go, give it the priority it deserves and give the task sufficient application.

Find the best exam deal or offer available at the appropriate time, and hang on to your cash. You’ll then be able to select where you do your exams – which means you can stay local.

Buying a course that includes payments for examinations (and if you’re financing your study there’ll be interest on that) is madness. Resist being talked into filling the training company’s account with your money just to give them more interest! Some will be pinning their hopes on the fact that you won’t get to do them all – but they won’t refund the cash.

It’s worth noting that exam re-takes with training companies who offer an ‘Exam Guarantee’ are tightly controlled. You will be required to do mock exams so you can prove to them you have a good chance of passing.

With average Prometric and VUE exams coming in at approximately 112 pounds in Great Britain, by far the best option is to pay for them as you take them. Not to fork out thousands extra in up-front costs. Study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is what will really guarantee success.

Always expect the very latest Microsoft (or Cisco, CompTIA etc.) authorised exam preparation and simulation materials.

Avoid depending on unauthorised exam preparation systems. The type of questions asked is sometimes startlingly different – and sometimes this can be a real headache when the proper exam time arrives.

Ensure that you verify whether you’re learning enough by doing tests and practice exams to prepare you for taking the proper exam.

Qualifications from the commercial sector are now, undoubtedly, beginning to replace the more academic tracks into the IT industry – so why should this be?

Industry is now aware that to cover the necessary commercial skill-sets, certified accreditation from such organisations as Microsoft, CISCO, Adobe and CompTIA is far more effective and specialised – saving time and money.

Vendor training works through concentrating on the particular skills that are needed (together with an appropriate level of related knowledge,) rather than spending months and years on the background detail and ‘fluff’ that academic courses can get bogged down in – to pad out the syllabus.

Imagine if you were an employer – and you needed to take on someone with a very particular skill-set. Which is the most straightforward: Go through loads of academic qualifications from several applicants, trying to establish what they know and what vocational skills have been attained, or choose particular accreditations that perfectly fit your needs, and draw up from that who you want to speak to. The interview is then more about the person and how they’ll fit in – instead of long discussions on technical suitability.

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We all know people who appear to breeze through life, happily moving from one triumph to the next. On the other hand, we know others who never quite make it, and always have an answer why life has dealt them a hard blow. Society is made up of victors and victims, and the difference can very often be boiled down to one key factor – attitude.

When you move in a new career direction, it’s vital to learn the habits of victors to gain a successful outcome. The victims pursue their actions in a timid manner, hoping for great things, but never really believing they’re worthy of them. Victors commit mentally to a successful result, and use emotion to back their actions.

Take two tennis players about to play for a championship. One says “It’s my last chance – I’ll give it my best shot,” but the other says “Winning is my destiny.” No prizes for guessing who’ll win the tournament. They may both put in the same hours, but the victor spends more time on his mental training to win.

We can define the victor by the word OAR (Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility) – a figure paddling towards success. The victim is defined by the word BED (Blame, Excuses and Denial) – one who stays in bed and gives up.

The victor doesn’t expect someone else to lead the way – and takes ownership of his or her tasks. He’s liable for his actions, and so takes them seriously (seeing things through by tackling problems not creating them). He takes responsibility for the results of his actions, and doesn’t allow excuses from himself.

The victim always has a reason for not achieving, and it’s rarely to do with him or herself. Everything is always someone else’s fault – he feels out of control so lays the blame at someone else’s door. He makes excuses for his under-performance, not realising the only person he’s convincing is himself. After repeating this pattern of blame and excuses for long enough, the victim lives a life of denial, convinced that there’s absolutely nothing he can do about his situation.

Students about to embark on a life-changing training course should give themselves a mental work-out, to prepare for success. Anybody who relates to the victim mentality will have to look at these issues before they start, to take full advantage of the potential in front of them.

Both sets of attitudes are just habits, and with constant repetition, habits can be changed. Listen to the voice inside your head – if it sounds like a victim, then stop it and verbalise why you can achieve. No one is any better than you – some have just fought their demons and emerged victorious.

“There is no such thing as a hero, only those who rise to the occasion”. Those were the words of Winston Churchill, and they’re just as valid today. We need to have the attitude of a winner in order to become a winner, both in learning and in life.

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Am I professing that IT training and careers within IT are the be-all and end-all of futures on this planet? God forbid, no. Where would we all be without the highly paid football stars who entertain us so well on a week by week basis? But there has to be a reason why increasing numbers of people are studying for careers within the IT industry.

The increase in IT training for those people who are seeking a career change or an enhancement to their existing skill sets has been an interesting development. In reviewing this, I’m curious to find out if this option really is viable, and why IT continues to offer the attraction?

Whilst we all accept that in relationships, people and key elements can change. A boyfriend or girlfriend at the age of 10 is often considered a cute thing, but not expected to last. Relationships at the age of 18-20 are often less transient, but again have a higher rate of short-term lifespan than others later in life.

We ask young people to make decisions and plan their working career fairly early on in life. Yet historically there seems to be an inherent resistance to change as times passes. So if we accept that life changes, and we accept that circumstances also change, isn’t it prudent for us to accept that career paths can and indeed ought to change?

The ongoing dependence of today’s society on IT, and factors related to IT, means that many people assume a career in this industry would be well paid and reliable, (based on simple economics of supply and demand). A lot see a direct correlation of how they utilise IT systems in a social environment (such as playing games and social interaction on the internet e.g. facebook etc.) and transfer that into a career. Could this genuinely lead to a career within IT, and what factors would be necessary for a successful career?

I believe that a key element in answering this is an understanding that a career in IT is as dependent on factors such as an employer (or client base if self-employed,) and economic issues, as any other career path. However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that professional people within the IT industry can move between employers and industry sectors more freely, due to the wide dependence on IT services across both geographic and industry models.

The term ‘Professional IT People’ is one of the key elements here – as in any other industry, employers have consistently sought staff where the skills can be proven by both experience and a recognised, approved benchmark. This is the same whether that’s a degree, or recognised apprenticeship culminating in an industry standard qualification, like an electrician or plumber.

It’s no different in the IT industry. Just because many people have a computer at home, and can experience many areas of the IT industry domestically, this is vastly different in many cases from the skills and resources required in the commercial sector. I’m sure we’d all acknowledge that playing games for four hours a night or surfing the internet doesn’t make us a qualified games designer, or a qualified webmaster.

Professional qualifications within the IT field such as MCSE or MCSA are immediately recognisable as an industry standard. Employers can rely upon the skills offered, and as such there is a reduced risk of breach of commercial insurance policies for work and services provided by such people, whether they are self-employed or directly employed.

If you’re seriously considering a future within the IT industry, you must look at how best to position yourself to become attractive to an employer. Holding a professional qualification goes a long way towards this. We should at least be aware of what the employer or client is looking for in recruitment or engagement, as they are the ones paying the salary.

Data exists in abundance to support the view that the growth in the IT sector is more resilient and faster than many other industry sectors. We’re experiencing a transitional shift in industry sectors, from the first world through to the third world. The rate at which many growing or ‘tiger’ economies are embracing and adapting to long standing IT systems is very fast indeed.

Within this article so far we’ve considered the trends, which along with the demise of traditional industry and therefore traditional expectancies of a job-for-life, there will be a growing propensity towards multiple jobs and career paths throughout our working life.

What’s more, we’ve noted that the IT industry remains attractive consistently as it continues to provide both supply and demand across geographical boundaries and across industry sectors. Todays forecasts also predict the increasing long-term dependence on IT systems overall. This includes the professional individuals who develop, utilise and maintain those systems, as they remain integral to many organisations long-term requirements.

Salary expectations remain high within this field, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that this is achievable. However, it’s worth noting that in many other industries the top-people get paid the top-money, and simply ‘being there’ is not good enough and does not guarantee the top-money.

We have also put forward the case that employers review recruitment for IT skills as no different to any other facet of their business, and they expect the individuals to formally demonstrate their skills and qualifications, in exactly the same way as they expect their electricians and accountants to be professionally qualified to do the work they’re employed to do.

It’s my belief that there is considerable evidence to view a career in IT as a strong and viable option for many people in today’s economic and social climate. Significant salaries are definitely achievable. And yet, it’s equally clear and only common sense to expect to have to gain a recognisable professional IT qualification. This not only clearly demonstrate one’s own ability, but at the very least it displays the attitude that your prospective employer can rely on you in the commercial field and that you are serious about this career path.

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Long term studies recently indicated that the average cost of bringing up a child in the UK amounted to 193,000 pounds in total – equating to approximately 26-28 pounds per day. The news was greeted with a swathe of cynical retorts from long suffering parents almost unified in their total lack of surprise.

Many pundits are now evaluating the current recession and its effect on traditional education systems with consistent reference to the strategies to survive adopted by parents, educators and students alike in the recession of the 1990’s.

On average, analysis suggests that up to 40 percent of the entire disposable income in a household is spent on education and schooling overall. With the tightening attitude towards bank lending and mortgage allocation, this figure could increase as youngsters stay with their parents for longer before leaving the nest and lengthen their education programs – perhaps as a by product of something to do whilst they wait for things to get better.

With families focusing increasingly on the cost of living, along with many companies cutting back on training and development programs – it’s pointless spending money on training when you don’t know for certain that the person won’t be made redundant – it’s small wonder that many people are now reviewing their method of personal development and the subject matter in which they study.

Banking, public services and the like have historically been considered long term stable employers and attracted people in accordance with that. Over the last ten or so years this has been largely superseded by the perception of positions on offer within the IT industry.

Training in the motor industry or engineering demands that key skills often have to be gained in a practical environment. By contrast, IT training can be predominantly home-based. It would be impossible to transport a complete car production line into the home, yet computer based training is easily at hand. Enhancements in the intellectual property field such as IT have grown exponentially as a result of this and the continued progression in the way the skills are learnt and taught.

New training methodology utilising 24/7 remote access to highly skilled lecturers adds weight to the strategy and the final result is certification in a field that is widely sought after throughout the world. Along with easily quantified salary and career structures it is little wonder that IT training is so attractive.

Many people are unsure of their future, whether early on in their career or mid way through life. Home based training, for example in IT, can often be viewed as a highly effective, low cost, easy-paced development program; gaining skills that are sought after all over the world and very resilient in a volatile economic environment.

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Breaking down the different stages of learning can be really helpful when we’re trying to work out where we are and how far we can go. It can be quite scary to look at the big goal – perhaps professional web designer with a large portfolio of clients who rely on our expertise, when it’s as much as we can do to remember the names of the software we’ll be using to learn!

There are four levels of understanding. Anytime we take on something new, we all go through these levels, and realising that helps us to measure ourselves and our progress.

Unconscious Incompetent, Conscious Incompetent, Conscious Competent, Unconscious Competent.

Career changers frequently begin at stage one – Unconscious Incompetent. We know we want to change at this stage, but we don’t yet know what we don’t know, what we need to know, how to learn it or where it might lead us! It sounds pretty desperate, but knowing we want to change is the important thing – we can be taught everything else .

The main thing is to take advice. The stage one person can discover what’s involved in the process by talking things through with an experienced advisor; then they can find out where they want to go and what they need to learn.

Conscious Incompetent – this is stage two. Now we’re probably at the start of our training course. Having been taught the various options, we’ve chosen our career path, and we know what we have to learn – or to put it another way, we’re conscious of what we don’t yet know, or what incompetences we currently have.

It’s important to comprehend this, and have the wisdom of knowing where we are. If we understand conscious incompetence, we won’t get so frustrated in our early stages of learning – we’re maybe not very good at it (particularly if it’s been a while since school…) but we do know we’ll get better. This process is accelerated with modern interactive training, so we don’t have to stay at this stage for very long.

Conscious Competent takes us to stage three. We’re in the flow of the learning environment, and can pick things up much more quickly. We still have to consciously think about what we’re doing on a continuous basis, but we’re able to learn competently. We’ll most likely complete our studies and successfully pass our exams during this learning stage, which will probably also extend into our working life too.

Remember when we learned to drive a car? We’d got to conscious competency by test time – good enough to pass the exam but still consciously aware of every manoeuvre. It wasn’t until we gained more experience to consolidate the knowledge that we moved into stage four.

In IT, we’ll probably be several years into our working experience before we become Unconsciously Competent. We know what we need to know, and no longer have to consciously think about why we do something. Although school’s never over for the true professional, (and certainly in IT the joy is there’s always more to learn) achieving this lofty height of understanding makes all the hard work worth it.

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