It’s a good idea to have a chat about jobs with an advisor – and if you’re uncertain, then take counsel on what kind of IT job would be right for you, based on your personality and ability level.
Training must be tailored to suit your ability level and skills. So, once you’ve decided on the most fruitful career for you, your next focus is the appropriate training programme that will get you into that job.
A typical blunder that students everywhere can make is to concentrate on the course itself, and take their eye off the desired end-result. Training academies are stacked to the hilt with students who chose a course based on what sounded good – instead of what would yield the job they want.
It’s quite usual, in many cases, to thoroughly enjoy one year of training and then spend 20 miserable years in something completely unrewarding, as an upshot of not doing some decent due-diligence when it was needed – at the start.
You’ll want to understand what expectations industry may have of you. What certifications they will want you to have and how you’ll go about getting some commercial experience. Spend some time setting guidelines as to how far you reckon you’re going to want to build your skill-set as it may present a very specific set of certifications.
It’s good advice for all students to chat with a professional advisor before they make a decision on a particular retraining path. This helps to ensure it contains the commercially required skills for the chosen career path.
Commercial certification is now, undoubtedly, already replacing the more academic tracks into the IT industry – why then should this be?
As demand increases for knowledge about more and more complex technology, the IT sector has moved to the specialised training that the vendors themselves supply – for example companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA. Often this saves time and money for the student.
They do this by focusing on the skills that are really needed (together with a relevant amount of background knowledge,) as opposed to covering masses of the background ‘padding’ that computer Science Degrees often do (because the syllabus is so wide).
It’s a bit like the TV advert: ‘It does what it says on the tin’. All an employer has to do is know where they have gaps, and then request applicants with the correct exam numbers. Then they’re assured that a potential employee can do exactly what’s required.
Locating job security in this economic down-turn is very unusual. Businesses frequently remove us from the workplace at a moment’s notice – whenever it suits.
In times of increasing skills shortages mixed with escalating demand though, we often find a new kind of market-security; where, fuelled by conditions of continuous growth, businesses find it hard to locate enough staff.
Using the computer market as an example, the 2006 e-Skills analysis demonstrated a skills gap across the United Kingdom around the 26 percent mark. That means for each 4 job positions existing in the computer industry, we have only 3 certified professionals to fulfil that role.
This worrying idea highlights the validity and need for more commercially trained Information Technology professionals throughout Great Britain.
As the Information Technology market is developing at such a rate, is there any other sector worth investigating for your new career.
Speak with almost any practiced advisor and they’ll entertain you with many terrible tales of students who’ve been conned by dodgy salespeople. Ensure you only ever work with an experienced professional that asks lots of questions to uncover the best thing for you – not for their paycheque! You must establish the very best place to start for you.
With a bit of commercial experience or qualifications, your starting-point of learning is different from a beginner.
If this is your initial crack at studying for an IT examination then you might also want to begin with some basic Microsoft package and Windows skills first.
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