Congratulate yourself that you’re reading this article! Only one in ten folks say they enjoy their work, but the majority just bitch about it and that’s it. Because you’ve done research we can guess that you’re finding out about training, so even now you’re ahead of the game. Now you just need to discover where you want to go and get going.
For those thinking of re-training, it’s important that you have in mind what you want and don’t want from the career you’d like to train for. Be sure that you would be more satisfied before much time and effort is spent changing the direction of your life. We recommend looking at the big picture first, to avoid disappointment:
* Is having company at work important to you? Perhaps you like being a team player? Or you may prefer task-orientated work that you can complete alone?
* What do you need from the industry your job is in? – We all know that things have changed, look at building and banking for instance.
* When you’ve done all your re-training, would you like your skills to take you through to retirement?
* Do you feel uncomfortable about the possibility of new employment opportunities, and being gainfully employed all the way until retirement?
The biggest industry in this country to meet the above criteria is the IT sector. There’s a demand for more skilled staff in this sector, just search any jobs website and you will find them yourself. But don’t think it’s all nerdy people staring at theirscreens all day long – it’s much more diverse than that. Most of staff in the computer industry are just like the rest of us, and they have very interesting and well paid jobs.
Be watchful that any qualifications that you’re considering will be commercially viable and are bang up to date. Training companies own certificates are often meaningless.
From an employer’s perspective, only the big-boys such as Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA or Adobe (to give some examples) give enough bang for your buck. Anything less just doesn’t cut the mustard.
How can job security truly exist anymore? In a marketplace like the UK, where business constantly changes its mind on a whim, there doesn’t seem much chance.
Where there are escalating skills deficits coupled with growing demand though, we can discover a fresh type of security in the marketplace; where, fuelled by conditions of continuous growth, businesses find it hard to locate the influx of staff needed.
Reviewing the Information Technology (IT) industry, the recent e-Skills analysis highlighted a more than 26 percent deficit in trained staff. Basically, we can’t properly place more than just 3 out of each 4 job positions in Information Technology (IT).
Appropriately taught and commercially accredited new staff are as a result at a complete premium, and in all likelihood it will stay that way for a long time.
Actually, acquiring professional IT skills throughout the next year or two is probably the best career choice you could ever make.
Starting from the viewpoint that it’s necessary to home-in on the job we want to do first and foremost, before we can even weigh up what career training meets that requirement, how can we choose the right path?
Working through a list of IT job-titles is next to useless. The majority of us don’t even know what the neighbours do for a living – so we’re in the dark as to the subtleties of a new IT role.
To get to the bottom of this, we need to discuss several different aspects:
* Your personality type and what you’re interested in – which work-centred jobs you enjoy or dislike.
* Is it your desire to accomplish an important goal – for example, being your own boss someday?
* How highly do you rate salary – is it of prime importance, or is job satisfaction higher up on the priority-scale?
* Considering the huge variation that the IT industry covers, it’s obvious you’ll need to be able to see the differences.
* Taking a good look at what commitment and time you’ll make available.
For the average person, dissecting so much data tends to require the help of a professional that can investigate each area with you. And not just the qualifications – you also need to understand the commercial needs and expectations of industry too.
What is the reason why qualifications from colleges and universities are being replaced by more qualifications from the commercial sector?
With an ever-increasing technical demand on resources, industry has of necessity moved to specialist courses only available through the vendors themselves – namely companies like Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA. Often this saves time and money for the student.
Of course, a necessary amount of background knowledge must be learned, but essential specialisation in the areas needed gives a vendor trained person a real head start.
The crux of the matter is this: Commercial IT certifications tell an employer precisely what skills you have – the title is a complete giveaway: for example, I am a ‘Microsoft Certified Professional’ in ‘Designing Security for a Windows 2003 Network’. Consequently companies can identify just what their needs are and what certifications are required to fulfil that.
Copyright Scott Edwards. Go to or .
