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Good for you! By landing here we guess you must be considering re-training to work in a different industry - that puts you way ahead of the crowd. Only one in ten of us are content with our jobs, but most complain but just stay there. Why not be one of a small number who make a difference in their lives.

For those thinking of re-training, it’s crucial to first define what you want and don’t want from the career you’re looking to get into. Ensure that the grass actually is greener before you spend time and effort altering your life’s plans. It’s good sense to regard the big picture first, to steer clear of regrets:

* Is working with other people your thing? Do you like to deal with the public? Or are you better with things that you can get on with on your own?

* Do you have a preference which sector you could be employed in? (In this economy, it’s more important than ever to get it right.)

* Having completed your retraining, would you like your new abilities to serve you till you retire?

* Are you concerned about the chance of finding new employment, and being gainfully employed to the end of your working life?

We ask you to really explore the IT sector - there are a larger number of jobs than people to do them, and it’s a rare career choice where the sector is on the grow. Despite what some people believe, it isn’t just geeks staring at their computers the whole day (if you like the sound of that though, they do exist.) The vast majority of roles are occupied by ordinary people who want to earn a very good living.

IT has become one of the more exciting and ground-breaking industries you could be involved with. To be dealing with leading-edge technology is to be a part of the massive changes that will affect us all over the next generation. We’re barely beginning to get to grips with how all this change will affect us. How we communicate and interact with everyone around us will be profoundly affected by technology and the internet.

And keep in mind that on average, the income of a person in the IT sector across the UK is considerably higher than in the rest of the economy, so in general you will more than likely gain noticeably more in the IT sector, than you could reasonably hope to achieve elsewhere. Demand for professionally qualified and skilled IT workers is assured for many years to come, thanks to the substantial increase in the marketplace and the very large skills gap still in existence.

Looking around, we find a glut of professional positions up for grabs in Information Technology. Deciding which one could be right for you is generally problematic. Reading a list of IT job-titles is just a waste of time. Most of us don’t really appreciate what our own family members do for a living - let alone understand the intricacies of a particular IT career. Arriving at the right answer really only appears through a thorough analysis across many unique criteria:

* Personality plays a major role - what kind of areas spark your interest, and what are the areas that get you down.

* Do you want to get certified for a certain motive - e.g. are you pushing to work based at home (self-employment?)?

* Does salary have a higher place on your list of priorities than other factors.

* Many students don’t properly consider the amount of work required to get fully certified.

* You need to understand what differentiates each individual training area.

In actuality, it’s obvious that the only real way to investigate these areas will be via a meeting with an experienced advisor who understands IT (and chiefly it’s commercial needs and requirements.)

Many training companies have a handy Job Placement Assistance program, to help you get your first job. Sometimes, people are too impressed with this facility, for it’s relatively easy for well qualified and focused men and women to land work in IT - as there is such a shortage of skilled employees.

Update your CV at the beginning of your training though - you should get plenty of help from your training provider on this. Don’t procrastinate and leave it until you’ve graduated or passed any exams. It’s not uncommon to find that junior support jobs have been offered to students who are in the process of training and haven’t got any qualifications yet. This will at the very least get your CV into the ‘possible’ pile and not the ‘no’ pile. You can usually expect quicker service from a local IT focused recruitment consultant or service than you’ll experience from any course provider’s employment division, because they’ll know local industry and the area better.

Essentially, if you put as much hard work into securing your first IT position as into studying, you’re not going to hit many challenges. A number of trainees strangely spend hundreds of hours on their course materials and then call a halt once they’ve passed their exams and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.

Many students come unstuck over one area of their training very rarely considered: How the training is broken down and couriered to your address. Trainees may consider it sensible (when study may take one to three years for a full commercial certification,) that a training provider will issue a single section at a time, as you complete each part. However: What happens when you don’t complete each and every exam? And what if you find the order of the modules counter-intuitive? Because of nothing that’s your fault, you mightn’t complete everything fast enough and consequently not get all your materials.

To be straight, the best solution is to obtain their recommendation on the best possible order of study, but make sure you have all of your learning modules right from the beginning. Meaning you’ve got it all in the event you don’t complete everything within their ideal time-table.

Ask almost any capable consultant and they can normally tell you many awful tales of students who’ve been sold completely the wrong course for them. Ensure you only ever work with a skilled professional who asks lots of questions to discover the most appropriate thing for you - not for their retirement-fund! You must establish a starting-point that will suit you. If you’ve got any real-world experience or certification, it may be that your starting point of study is very different to someone completely new. Always consider starting with some basic Microsoft package and Windows skills first. This can set the scene for your on-going studies and make the transition to higher-level learning a a little easier.