Nice One! Finding this article proves you must be wondering about where you're going, and if training for a new career's in your mind then you've already got further than most. Can you believe that hardly any of us would say we are contented at work - yet the vast majority of us will do absolutely nothing about it. Why not be different and do something - you have the rest of your life to enjoy it.
We'd recommend that in advance of taking a training course, you run through some things with a mentor who is familiar with the working environment and can advise you. They can look at aspects of your personality and help you find your ideal job to train for:
* Do you see yourself dealing with people? Is that as part of a team or with a lot of new people? Possibly operating on your own in a task-based situation could suit you better?
* Are you thinking carefully about which area you maybe could work in? (With the economic downturn, it's more important than ever to choose carefully.)
* Is it important that this should be the last time you will need more qualifications?
* Are you concerned about the chance of getting new work, and being gainfully employed all the way until retirement?
The biggest industry in Great Britain that fulfils the above criteria is Information Technology. There's a demand for more knowledgeable people in this market, just check out any jobs website and you will find them yourself. Don't misunderstand and think it's full of techie geeks gazing towards theirscreens all the time - it's much more diverse than that. Large numbers of workers in the computer industry are just like the rest of us, and they have very interesting and well paid jobs.
Look at the following facts in detail if you think the marketing blurb about an 'Exam Guarantee' sounds great value:
You're paying for it ultimately. One thing's for sure - it isn't free - they've simply charged more for the whole training package.
Should you seriously need to pass first time, then you should pay for each exam as you go, focus on it intently and apply yourself as required.
Take your exams somewhere local and find the best exam deal or offer available then.
Including money in your training package for exams (plus interest - if you're financing your study) is a false economy. It's not your job to boost the training company's account with extra money of yours only to please their Bank Manager! Many will hope you will never make it to exams - so they don't need to pay for them.
The majority of organisations will require you to do mock exams and with-hold subsequent exam entries from you until you've demonstrated an excellent ability to pass - which actually leaves you with no guarantee at all.
Average exam fees were approximately 112 pounds in the last 12 months via local VUE or Pro-metric centres throughout the country. Therefore, why splash out often many hundreds of pounds extra to get 'an Exam Guarantee', when it's no secret that what's really needed is a commitment to studying and the use of authorised exam preparation tools.
Many trainers provide a shelf full of reference manuals. This can be very boring and not really conducive to achieving retention.
We see a huge improvement in memory retention when we use multiple senses - this has been an accepted fact in expert circles for decades now.
The latest audio-visual interactive programs involving demonstration and virtual lab's will turn you off book-based study for ever more. And they're a lot more fun to do.
Be sure to get a study material demo' from the training company. You'll want to see expert-led demonstrations, slideshows and lab's for you to practice your skills in.
It doesn't make sense to select online only courseware. Connection quality and reliability varies hugely across most broadband providers, it makes sense to have physical media such as CD or DVD ROM's.
When did you last consider the security of your job? For the majority of us, this issue only becomes a talking point when something dramatic happens to shake us. But in today's marketplace, the lesson often learned too late is that job security doesn't really exist anymore, for all but the most lucky of us.
We can however locate market-level security, by probing for areas of high demand, coupled with a lack of qualified workers.
The computer industry skills deficit across the United Kingdom clocks in at roughly 26 percent, according to a recent e-Skills investigation. Put simply, we can only fill three out of every four jobs in Information Technology (IT).
This single reality in itself is the backbone of why the UK is in need of a lot more workers to get trained and become part of the IT industry.
With the market evolving at such a speed, is there any other sector worth taking into account for a new future.
A lot of commercial training providers only give office hours or extended office hours support; It's rare to find someone who offers late evening or full weekend cover.
Many only provide email support (too slow), and so-called telephone support is normally just routed to a call-centre who will chat nicely with you for 5 minutes to ask what the issue is and then simply send an email to an instructor - who will then call back sometime over the next 24hrs, when it suits them. This is no good if you're stuck and can't continue and have a one hour time-slot in which to study.
It's possible to find the top providers which offer online support at all times - even in the middle of the night.
If you accept anything less than direct-access round-the-clock support, you'll regret it. It may be that you don't use it during the night, but consider weekends, early mornings or even late evenings at some point.
All programs you're considering has to build towards a commercially valid qualification as an end-goal - and not some unimportant 'in-house' diploma - fit only for filing away and forgetting.
From an employer's viewpoint, only the top companies such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe (to give some examples) will get you short-listed. Nothing else will cut the mustard.
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