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 24×7 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 24×7 – 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.
An all too common mistake that we encounter all too often is to focus entirely on getting a qualification, and take their eye off where they want to get to. Colleges are brimming over with unaware students who took a course because it seemed fun – rather than what would get them an enjoyable career or job.
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 well worth a long chat to see what industry will expect from you. Which precise exams they’ll want you to gain and in what way you can gain some industry experience. It’s also worth spending time thinking about how far you think you’ll want to progress your career as often it can force you to choose a particular set of exams.
Take advice from a professional advisor, even if you have to pay – as it’s a lot cheaper and safer to find out at the start whether you’ve chosen correctly, rather than find out after several years of study that you aren’t going to enjoy the job you’ve chosen and have to start from the beginning again.
Let’s face it: There really is pretty much no individual job security anywhere now; there’s only industry or business security – companies can just drop any single member of staff if it suits their business interests.
In actuality, security now only emerges in a fast rising market, driven by a lack of trained workers. It’s this shortage that creates the right conditions for a secure marketplace – definitely a more pleasing situation.
The 2006 national e-Skills analysis showed that more than 26 percent of all IT positions available haven’t been filled because of a lack of trained staff. To put it another way, this highlights that the United Kingdom is only able to source 3 certified professionals for each four job positions existing currently.
This disquieting fact shows the requirement for more appropriately accredited computing professionals in the United Kingdom.
In reality, acquiring professional IT skills as you progress through the next year or two is probably the greatest career choice you could ever make.
We’re regularly asked to explain why academic qualifications are less in demand than the more commercial qualifications?
Accreditation-based training (as it’s known in the industry) is far more effective and specialised. The IT sector has realised that specialisation is what’s needed to meet the requirements of an acceleratingly technical commercial environment. Microsoft, CompTIA, CISCO and Adobe are the big boys in this field.
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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