Network and computer support staff are more and more in demand in Great Britain, as companies rely heavily on their technical advice and ability to fix and repair. Our hunger for such skilled and qualified individuals is constantly growing, as industry becomes significantly more reliant on computers.
Often, people don’t comprehend what information technology can do for us. It’s electrifying, revolutionary, and puts you at the fore-front of developments in technology that will change our world over the next few decades. We’re at the dawn of starting to get to grips with what this change will mean to us. How we interrelate with the rest of the world will be profoundly affected by technology and the internet.
The money in IT isn’t to be sniffed at either – the usual income throughout Britain for the usual IT professional is a lot more than in the rest of the economy. It’s likely that you’ll receive a whole lot more than you would in most other jobs. Because the IT market sector is still growing at an unprecedented rate, it’s likely that the need for well trained and qualified IT technicians will continue to boom for quite some time to come.
Which questions do we need to pose if we want to take in the understanding we want? As it seems there are a good many rather impressive opportunities for us all to mull over.
Don’t get hung-up, as a lot of students can, on the training process. Training for training’s sake is generally pointless; this is about gaining commercial employment. You need to remain focused on where you want to go. It’s a sad testimony to the sales skills of many companies, but the majority of trainees start out on programs that sound spectacular from the marketing materials, but which delivers a career that doesn’t fulfil at all. Try talking to typical college graduates for a real eye-opener.
You must also consider how you feel about career development, earning potential, and if you’re ambitious or not. You need to know what will be expected of you, which particular qualifications will be required and how you’ll gain real-world experience. Seek advice from an experienced professional, irrespective of whether you have to pay – it’s usually much cheaper and safer to investigate at the start whether you’ve chosen correctly, rather than find out after two full years that you’ve picked the wrong track and now need to go back to square one.
One thing you must always insist on is comprehensive 24×7 direct-access support with trained professional instructors and mentors. It’s an all too common story to find providers that will only offer a basic 9am till 6pm support period (maybe later on certain days) with very little availability over the weekend. Try and find training where you can access help at any time you choose (even 1am on Sunday morning!) Make sure it’s always 24×7 direct access to mentors and instructors, and not access to a call-in service which takes messages – so you’re consistently being held in a queue for a call-back – probably during office hours.
Top training providers utilise an online 24×7 service pulling in several support offices over many time-zones. You get an easy to use interface which accesses the most appropriate office any time of the day or night: Support available as-and-when you want it. If you accept anything less than direct-access 24×7 support, you’ll quickly find yourself regretting it. You might not want to use the service in the middle of the night, but you may need weekends, late evenings or early mornings.
The classroom style of learning we remember from school, with books and manuals, can be pretty hard going sometimes. If you’re nodding as you read this, look for learning programmes which have a majority of interactive, multimedia parts. Studies in learning psychology have shown that much more of what we learn in remembered when we receive multi-sensorial input, and we get physically involved with the study process.
Fully interactive motion videos involving demonstration and virtual lab’s will beat books every time. And they’re a lot more fun to do. You must ensure that you see the type of training provided by each company you’re contemplating. It’s essential they incorporate video demo’s and interactive elements such as practice lab’s.
Purely on-line training should be avoided. Physical CD or DVD ROM materials are preferable where available, so that you have access at all times – you don’t want to be reliant on a good broadband connection all the time.
It’s usual for students to get confused with a single courseware aspect usually not even thought about: How the training is broken down and sent out to you. Individual deliveries for each training module one piece at a time, as you pass each exam is the typical way that your program will arrive. This sounds logical, but you must understand the following: What would their reaction be if you find it difficult to do all the exams at the required speed? Often the prescribed exam order doesn’t come as naturally as some other order of studying might.
To avoid any potential future issues, many trainees now want to insist that all study materials are delivered immediately, and not in stages. You can then decide at what speed and in which order you want to finish things.
Your training program should always include the very latest Microsoft (or relevant organisation’s) authorised exam preparation packages. Students regularly can be thrown off course by practicing questions for their exams that are not from official boards. It’s not uncommon that the question formats and phraseology can be completely unlike un-authorised versions and it’s vital that you know this. Ensure that you check how much you know by doing quizzes and practice in simulated exam environments to get you ready for the real deal.
Several companies supply a practical Job Placement Assistance service, designed to steer you into your first job. The fact of the matter is it’s not as difficult as you may be led to believe to get a job – assuming you’re well trained and qualified; the growing UK skills shortage sees to that.
Update your CV at the beginning of your training though – you should get plenty of help from your training provider on this. Don’t put it off until you’ve graduated or passed any exams. You might not even have qualified when you’ll secure your initial junior support position; however this isn’t going to happen unless you’ve posted your CV on job sites. The best services to help get you placed are generally specialist independent regional recruitment consultancies. Because they only get paid when they place you, they’ll work that much harder to get a result.
In a nutshell, if you put the same amount of effort into getting a job as into training, you won’t have any problems. Some men and women strangely spend hundreds of hours on their training course and do nothing more once qualified and seem to expect employers to find them.
