Congratulations! Hitting upon this feature suggests you're thinking about your future, and if training for a new career's in your mind then you've alr...
Congratulations! Hitting upon this feature suggests you're thinking about your future,
and if training for a new career's in your mind then you've already got further than the majority of people will. Are you aware that just one in ten of us consider ourselves contented at work - but most will take no corrective action. Why don't you be different and make a start - you have the rest of your life to enjoy it.
When looking at training, it's vital that you have in mind what you DO want and DON'T want from the job you'd like to train for. Be sure that you would be more satisfied before you put a lot of energy into altering your life's plans. Prudence suggests looking at the end goal first, to make the right judgements:
* Do you want to interact with other people? If the answer's yes, would you enjoy being part of a team or are you hoping to meet new people? Maybe you'd rather be left alone to get on with things?
* What do you require from your chosen industry? (Building and banking - not so stable as they once were.)
* How long a career do you hope to have once retrained, and will the market sector offer you the chance to do that?
* Would you like your study to be in a market sector where as far as you can see your chances of gainful employment are high until your pension kicks in?
Look at the IT sector, it will be well worth your time - you'll find it's one of the only growing market sectors in this country and overseas. And the salaries are much higher than most.
Don't put too much store, like so many people do, on the training process. You're not training for the sake of training; this is about employment. Stay focused on what it is you want to achieve. It's a sad fact, but thousands of new students kick-off study that often sounds amazing in the sales literature, but which provides the end-result of a job that is of no interest at all. Try talking to typical college graduates and you'll see where we're coming from.
Get to grips with earning potential and the level of your ambition. Sometimes, this affects what precise certifications you'll need to attain and what you can expect to give industry in return. As a precursor to beginning a training programme, you'd be well advised to discuss the exact job requirements with an experienced industry advisor, to ensure the retraining program covers everything needed.
Starting from the viewpoint that we have to locate the job we want to do first, before we're even able to consider what career development program fulfils our needs, how do we know the way that suits us? Scanning lists of IT career possibilities is no use whatsoever. The vast majority of us don't even know what the neighbours do for a living - so we're in the dark as to the ins and outs of a particular IT career. To get through to the essence of this, we need to discuss a number of definitive areas:
* What nature of individual you think yourself to be - which things you enjoy doing, and conversely - what you hate to do.
* Why you're looking at stepping into the IT industry - is it to overcome a long-held goal like being self-employed for example.
* The income requirements that guide you?
* Considering all that Information Technology encompasses, it's a requirement that you can absorb what's different.
* It's wise to spend some time thinking about the level of commitment you'll put into your training.
In all honesty, you'll find the only real way to gain help on these areas will be via a meeting with an advisor that has experience of IT (and more importantly the commercial needs.)
Any advisor who doesn't dig around with lots of question - it's more than likely they're really a salesperson. If they're pushing towards a particular product before learning about your history and whether you have any commercial experience, then it's definitely the case. If you have a strong background, or maybe some real-world experience (some certifications gained previously perhaps?) then obviously the point from which you begin your studies will be different from a student that is completely new to the industry. It's usual to start with some basic Microsoft package and Windows skills first. This can set the scene for your on-going studies and make the learning curve a little less steep.
There is no way of over emphasising this: You absolutely must have proper 24x7 professional support from mentors and instructors. We can tell you that you'll strongly regret it if you don't. Many only provide email support (too slow), and so-called telephone support is normally just routed to a call-centre which will just take down the issue and email it over to their technical team - who will then call back sometime over the next 24hrs, at a suitable time to them. This is not a lot of use if you're sitting there confused over an issue and only have certain times available in which to do your studies.
Keep looking and you'll come across the top providers which recommend and use online support around the clock - at any time of day or night. If you fail to get yourself direct-access 24x7 support, you'll quickly find yourself regretting it. It may be that you don't use it during late nights, but consider weekends, early mornings or late evenings.
