by Jason Kendall
Good for you! By landing here we guess you must be considering re-training to work in a different industry – that puts you way ahead of the crowd. Only one in ten of us are content with our jobs, but most complain but just stay there. Why not be one of a small number who make a difference in their lives.
It’s advisable to get some help before you start – find someone who knows the industry; someone who’ll give you career advice based on what works best for you, and then show you the learning programs which are appropriate for you:
* Is collaborating with others important to you? Would that be with the same people or with a lot of new people? Perhaps working alone with your own methodology would be more your thing?
* Building and Banking are a little shaky today, so which sector would suit you best?
* Is this the last time you plan to retrain, and based on that, do you believe this career choice will allow you to do that?
* Do you have niggles about the possibility of getting another job, and staying employable to the end of your working life?
We would advise you to find out more about the IT sector – there are more positions than employees, because it’s a rare career choice where the industry is still growing. Despite the opinions of certain people, it isn’t a bunch of techie geeks lost in their PC’s the whole day (though those jobs exist.) The vast majority of roles are done by ordinary people who enjoy a very nice lifestyle due to better than average wages.
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.
* Are you looking to pull off a closely held objective – like becoming self-employed as quickly as possible?
* Where do you stand on traveling time and locality vs. salary?
* Some students don’t fully understand the amount of work needed to achieve their goals.
* You have to understand the differences across all the training areas.
For most of us, dissecting each of these concepts tends to require the help of an experienced pro who can investigate each area with you. And we’re not only talking about the certifications – you also need to understand the commercial requirements and expectations of industry too.
The somewhat scary thought of landing your first IT job is often eased because some trainers offer a Job Placement Assistance service. The need for this feature can be bigged up out of proportion though – it’s quite easy for training companies to overplay it. At the end of the day, the massive skills shortage in the United Kingdom is why employers will be interested in you.
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 specialized 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:
The author: Jason Kendall has worked in IT for 20 yrs. He now advises on commercial certification. For advice on IT Training, visit LearningLolly IT Courses.
