If it weren't for a constant influx of knowledgeable network and PC support personnel, business in the UK (and around the world) would surely grind to a halt. There is an ever growing requirement for people to support both the systems and the users themselves. Because we become massively more dependent on advanced technology, we simultaneously find ourselves increasingly dependent on the skilled and qualified networking professionals, who keep the systems going.
There is no way of over emphasising this: It's essential to obtain proper 24x7 round-the-clock instructor and mentor support. Later, you'll kick yourself if you don't.
You'll be waiting ages for an answer with email based support, and phone support is often to a call-centre which will just take down the issue and email it over to their technical team - who'll call back sometime over the next 1-3 days, when it suits them. This is not a lot of use if you're stuck with a particular problem and have a one hour time-slot in which to study.
If you look properly, you'll find the top providers which provide their students direct-access support 24x7 - even in the middle of the night.
If you accept anything less than support round-the-clock, you'll end up kicking yourself. It may be that you don't use it late at night, but you're bound to use weekends, late evenings or early mornings.
Make sure you don't get caught-up, as can often be the case, on the training process. You're not training for the sake of training; this is about employment. You need to remain focused on where you want to go.
It's possible, in some situations, to get a great deal of enjoyment from a year of study and then find yourself trapped for decades in a tiresome job role, as a consequence of not performing the correct research at the beginning.
It's essential to keep your focus on where you want to get to, and create a learning-plan from that - not the other way round. Stay focused on the end-goal - making sure you're training for something you'll still be enjoying many years from now.
We'd recommend you seek advice from a professional advisor before making your final decision on some particular study program, so there's little doubt that the specific package will give the skill-set required for your career choice.
Locating job security these days is very unusual. Businesses can drop us from the workforce at a moment's notice - whenever it suits.
In times of increasing skills shortages coupled with high demand areas however, we often discover a newer brand of market-security; as fuelled by the constant growth conditions, companies just can't get the staff required.
The IT skills-gap in the United Kingdom is standing at approximately twenty six percent, according to the most recent e-Skills survey. That means for each four job positions existing across computing, we have only 3 certified professionals to fulfil that role.
This single reality on its own underpins why the United Kingdom urgently requires considerably more people to get into the industry.
Because the IT sector is evolving at such a rate, there really isn't any other sector worth investigating as a retraining vehicle.
Commercial certification is now, very visibly, taking over from the more academic tracks into IT - why then has this come about?
With university education costs spiralling out of control, along with the industry's growing opinion that vendor-based training often has more relevance in the commercial field, there has been a great increase in Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA accredited training programmes that educate students at a much reduced cost in terms of money and time.
Academic courses, for example, become confusing because of a great deal of loosely associated study - with much too broad a syllabus. Students are then held back from understanding the specific essentials in enough depth.
Think about if you were the employer - and your company needed a person with some very particular skills. What's the simplest way to find the right person: Wade your way through loads of academic qualifications from various applicants, struggling to grasp what they've learned and which workplace skills they have, or choose particular accreditations that exactly fulfil your criteria, and make your short-list from that. You can then focus on how someone will fit into the team at interview - rather than establishing whether they can do a specific task.
There is no way of over emphasising this: It's essential to obtain proper 24x7 round-the-clock instructor and mentor support. Later, you'll kick yourself if you don't.
You'll be waiting ages for an answer with email based support, and phone support is often to a call-centre which will just take down the issue and email it over to their technical team - who'll call back sometime over the next 1-3 days, when it suits them. This is not a lot of use if you're stuck with a particular problem and have a one hour time-slot in which to study.
If you look properly, you'll find the top providers which provide their students direct-access support 24x7 - even in the middle of the night.
If you accept anything less than support round-the-clock, you'll end up kicking yourself. It may be that you don't use it late at night, but you're bound to use weekends, late evenings or early mornings.
Make sure you don't get caught-up, as can often be the case, on the training process. You're not training for the sake of training; this is about employment. You need to remain focused on where you want to go.
It's possible, in some situations, to get a great deal of enjoyment from a year of study and then find yourself trapped for decades in a tiresome job role, as a consequence of not performing the correct research at the beginning.
It's essential to keep your focus on where you want to get to, and create a learning-plan from that - not the other way round. Stay focused on the end-goal - making sure you're training for something you'll still be enjoying many years from now.
We'd recommend you seek advice from a professional advisor before making your final decision on some particular study program, so there's little doubt that the specific package will give the skill-set required for your career choice.
Locating job security these days is very unusual. Businesses can drop us from the workforce at a moment's notice - whenever it suits.
In times of increasing skills shortages coupled with high demand areas however, we often discover a newer brand of market-security; as fuelled by the constant growth conditions, companies just can't get the staff required.
The IT skills-gap in the United Kingdom is standing at approximately twenty six percent, according to the most recent e-Skills survey. That means for each four job positions existing across computing, we have only 3 certified professionals to fulfil that role.
This single reality on its own underpins why the United Kingdom urgently requires considerably more people to get into the industry.
Because the IT sector is evolving at such a rate, there really isn't any other sector worth investigating as a retraining vehicle.
Commercial certification is now, very visibly, taking over from the more academic tracks into IT - why then has this come about?
With university education costs spiralling out of control, along with the industry's growing opinion that vendor-based training often has more relevance in the commercial field, there has been a great increase in Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA accredited training programmes that educate students at a much reduced cost in terms of money and time.
Academic courses, for example, become confusing because of a great deal of loosely associated study - with much too broad a syllabus. Students are then held back from understanding the specific essentials in enough depth.
Think about if you were the employer - and your company needed a person with some very particular skills. What's the simplest way to find the right person: Wade your way through loads of academic qualifications from various applicants, struggling to grasp what they've learned and which workplace skills they have, or choose particular accreditations that exactly fulfil your criteria, and make your short-list from that. You can then focus on how someone will fit into the team at interview - rather than establishing whether they can do a specific task.
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