by Jason Kendall
Congratulations! By reading this we guess you must be considering re-training to work in a different industry – so you’ve already done more than most. A small minority of us are satisfied with our careers, but it’s rare anyone does more than moan. Why not be one of a small number who make a difference in their lives.
We’d strongly advise that prior to beginning a course of training, you chat with an expert who can see the bigger picture and can make recommendations. They can assess your personality and help you sort out a role to fit you:
* Do you see yourself dealing with people? Is that as part of a team or with a lot of new people? Perhaps working alone on specific tasks may be your preference?
* Building and Banking are a little shaky today, so which sector would suit you best?
* Having completed your retraining, would you like your new abilities to serve you till you retire?
* Do you have niggles about the possibility of getting another job, and staying employable to the end of your working life?
We ask you to really explore the IT sector – there are a larger number of jobs than people to do them, and it’s a rare career choice where the sector is on the grow. Despite what some people believe, it isn’t just geeks staring at their computers the whole day (if you like the sound of that though, they do exist.) The vast majority of roles are occupied by ordinary people who want to earn a very good living.
IT has become one of the more exciting and ground-breaking industries you could be involved with. To be dealing with leading-edge technology is to be a part of the massive changes that will affect us all over the next generation. We’re barely beginning to get to grips with how all this change will affect us. How we communicate and interact with everyone around us will be profoundly affected by technology and the internet.
Should lifestyle be high on your scale of wants, you will be pleasantly surprised to hear that the income on average for a typical IT worker is noticeably greater than with much of the rest of industry. The good news is there is no easing up for IT industry increases in Great Britain as a whole. The market continues to develop enormously, and as we have a skills gap that means we only typically have three IT workers for every four jobs it’s not likely that there’ll be any kind of easing off for years to come.
Looking around, we find a glut of professional positions up for grabs in Information Technology. Deciding which one could be right for you is generally problematic. Reading a list of IT job-titles is just a waste of time. Most of us don’t really appreciate what our own family members do for a living – let alone understand the intricacies of a particular IT career. Arriving at the right answer really only appears through a thorough analysis across many unique criteria:
* Personality plays a major role – what kind of areas spark your interest, and what are the areas that get you down.
* What sort of time-frame do you want for the training process?
* Does salary have a higher place on your list of priorities than other factors.
* Many students don’t properly consider the amount of work required to get fully certified.
* Having a proper look at the level of commitment, time and effort that you can put aside.
In actuality, it’s obvious that the only real way to investigate these areas will be via a meeting with an experienced advisor who understands IT (and chiefly it’s commercial needs and requirements.)
Getting your first commercial position can be a little easier if you’re supported with a Job Placement Assistance facility. However sometimes this feature is bigged up too much, as it is genuinely quite straightforward for any focused and well taught person to get work in the IT environment – because companies everywhere are seeking well trained people.
Ideally you should have advice and support about your CV and interviews though; and we’d encourage everybody to bring their CV up to date the day they start training – don’t delay until you’ve graduated or passed any exams. You might not even have taken your exams when you will get your initial junior support role; however this won’t be the case unless your CV is with employers. The top companies to get you a new position are most often specialised and independent recruitment consultants. Because they get paid commission to place you, they have the necessary incentive to try that bit harder.
Essentially, if you put as much hard work into securing your first IT position as into studying, you’re not going to hit many challenges. A number of trainees strangely spend hundreds of hours on their course materials and then call a halt once they’ve passed their exams and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.
One area often overlooked by people thinking about a course is the issue of ‘training segmentation’. Basically, this means the breakdown of the materials for delivery to you, which makes a huge difference to where you end up. Often, you’ll enrol on a course staged over 2 or 3 years and receive one element at a time until graduation. While this may sound logical on one level, consider this: What if there are reasons why you can’t finish every single exam? Maybe the prescribed order won’t suit you? Through no fault of your own, you might take a little longer and consequently not get all your materials.
To be straight, the best solution is to obtain their recommendation on the best possible order of study, but make sure you have all of your learning modules right from the beginning. Meaning you’ve got it all in the event you don’t complete everything within their ideal time-table.
A so-called advisor who doesn’t ask many questions – chances are they’re really a salesperson. If they push a particular product before learning about your history and whether you have any commercial experience, then you know you’re being sold to. With some work-based experience or some accreditation, you could discover that your appropriate starting-point is very different to someone completely new. Commencing with a user skills module first may be the ideal way to start into your IT programme, depending on your skill level at the moment.
About the Author:
After 2 Decades in IT, Jason Kendall has turned his attention to computer training consultancy in the UK. To investigate
IT Training, visit LearningLolly
Computer Courses.