All of us are short of time, and most often if we desire to improve our career prospects, taking a course at the same time as holding down a job is what we’re faced with. Certified training from Microsoft can fill that gap.

It’s a good idea to have a chat about jobs with a training advisor – and if you haven’t come to a decision, then get help to sort out which area of the industry would suit you most, based on your personality and ability level.

Confirm that your training is personalised to your current skills and aptitude. The best companies will always guarantee that the training is designed for where you want to get to.

Ignore the typical salesman who recommends a training program without performing a ‘fact-find’ to gain understanding of your current abilities plus your level of experience. Ensure that they have a generous choice of training products so they can give you an appropriate solution.

With some commercial experience or qualifications, you may find that your starting point is very different to someone completely new.

It’s wise to consider some basic Microsoft package and Windows skills first. It can brush up on your current abilities and make the transition to higher-level learning a bit more manageable.

Commercially accredited qualifications are now, very visibly, beginning to replace the more academic tracks into the IT sector – why then should this be?

With the costs of academic degree’s climbing ever higher, together with the industry’s increasing awareness that key company training most often has much more commercial relevance, there’s been a large rise in Microsoft, CISCO, Adobe and CompTIA certified training paths that supply key solutions to a student at a fraction of the cost and time involved.

Typically, students are simply taught the necessary specifics in depth. It isn’t quite as lean as that might sound, but the most important function is always to master the precisely demanded skill-sets (with some necessary background) – without going into too much detail in everything else – in the way that academic establishments often do.

If an employer knows what they’re looking for, then they simply need to advertise for someone with a specific qualification. Commercial syllabuses are set to exacting standards and don’t change between schools (as academic syllabuses often do).

One of the most important things to insist on has to be 24×7 round-the-clock support via professional mentors and instructors. So many companies we come across only provide support to you inside of office hours (typically 9am-6pm) and sometimes a little earlier or later (but not weekends usually).

Beware of institutions who use ‘out-of-hours’ call-centres – where an advisor will call back during the next ‘working’ day. This is no use if you’re stuck and need help now.

The best training colleges offer a web-based 24×7 system pulling in several support offices throughout multiple time-zones. You’ll have a single, easy-to-use environment which accesses the most appropriate office irrespective of the time of day: Support when you need it.

Don’t ever make the mistake of taking second best when you’re looking for the right support service. The majority of students who drop-out or fail, would have had a different experience if they’d got the right support package in the first place.

Looking around, we find a glut of employment in the IT industry. Picking the right one in this uncertainty is a mammoth decision.

Since without any solid background in Information Technology, how should we possibly understand what a particular job actually consists of?

To attack this, we need to discuss a variety of definitive areas:

* Personality plays a significant part – what gets you ‘up and running’, and what are the activities that you really dislike.

* What sort of time-frame do you want for your training?

* Where do you stand on job satisfaction vs salary?

* With many, many ways to train in the IT industry – it’s wise to gain a solid grounding on what separates them.

* How much effort you’re prepared to commit your training.

In all honesty, it’s obvious that the only real way to seek advice on these areas is through a chat with an experienced advisor that has a background in Information Technology (and more importantly the commercial requirements.)

Copyright 2009 S. Edwards. Try CIW Course or Click HERE.