In these days of super efficiency, support workers who have the ability to mend PC’s and networks, plus give ongoing help to users, are vital in all sections of industry. Our requirement for more technically qualified people multiplies, as society becomes significantly more beholden to computers in today’s environment.

A lot of training providers will only provide basic 9am till 6pm support (maybe a little earlier or later on certain days); not many go late into the evening (after 8-9pm) or cover weekends properly.

Locate training schools with help available at any time you choose (even if it’s early hours on Sunday morning!) Make sure it’s always 24×7 direct access to mentors and instructors, and not simply some messaging service that means you’re parked in a queue of others waiting to be called back – probably during office hours.

We recommend looking for training schools that incorporate three or four individual support centres active in different time-zones. Every one of them needs to be seamlessly combined to offer a simple interface and round-the-clock access, when it’s convenient for you, with no hassle.

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.

Make sure you don’t get caught-up, as can often be the case, on the training process. You’re not training for the sake of training; this is about employment. You need to remain focused on where you want to go.

You may train for one year and then end up doing the job for 20 years. Don’t make the error of opting for what may seem to be an ‘interesting’ training program and then spend decades in an unrewarding career!

It’s essential to keep your focus on where you want to get to, and create a learning-plan from that – not the other way round. Stay focused on the end-goal – making sure you’re training for something you’ll still be enjoying many years from now.

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.

How can job security truly exist anymore? Here in the UK, where industry can change its mind whenever it suits, there doesn’t seem much chance.

We can however hit upon security at market-level, by digging for high demand areas, tied with work-skill shortages.

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?

With a growing demand for specific technological expertise, industry has moved to the specialised core-skills learning only available through the vendors themselves – in other words companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA. This usually turns out to involve less time and financial outlay.

Vendor training works by honing in on the skills that are really needed (along with a relevant amount of background knowledge,) as opposed to covering masses of the background non-specific minutiae that academic courses can get bogged down in – to pad out the syllabus.

When an employer understands what areas they need covered, then all they have to do is advertise for someone with a specific qualification. The syllabuses are all based on the same criteria and don’t change between schools (in the way that degree courses can).

(C) 2009 – S. Edwards. Check out Web Design Training or Careers-Advisor.co.uk/caradvk.html.