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No great accomplishment has ever been achieved without planning. When Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Mount Everest, he wasn’t out for a stroll and all of a sudden found himself at the summit! To make a change to your life you have to plan to make the change or it won’t happen.

Prior to commencing your training course, take the time to think about your personal goals, and work out a study programme with targets or indicators of success along the way. To help you get started, use the acronym Smart to qualify the goals you plan to achieve. Smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and targeted.

Make a personal contract based on the following 5 D’s to immerse yourself in the positive outcome of your studies. This contract should be written down, and signed.

DEFINE (what you want out of it) e.g. the exact car, house, number and type of holidays, income level for partner to give up work etc. Be specific or you won’t know when you’ve achieved it. Re-enforce it with photographs and put them up around where you plan to work.

DESIRE. Explore your emotions for this one, and dig deep to discover why your studies are important. Is it to prove to yourself or others that you are an achiever, and that you deserve better things? Perhaps you want more control in your life, or maybe it’s a personal challenge.

Commitment or DEDICATION. Announce to yourself and those close to you that you’re dedicated to your studies by writing up a timetable and sticking with it. However much time you choose to study each week, have it written on a calendar planner that you can cross off once you’ve completed it. Put it in a prominent place so it’s at the forefront of your mind (at least until it becomes a habit). All things that are important get prioritised, so let your friends and family know that this is a priority to you for perhaps ten hours a week for a set number of months. Once your timetable has become established, you’ll take pride in your dedication, and study all the better for it.

DETERMINATION – The will to stick to the plan until completion and see it through. This is your contract to ensure that you won’t let yourself down.

DISCIPLINE. The goals and disciplines you put in place will give you strength to overcome any adversities that inevitably come your way.

Once you’ve done this, sign it and do NOT put it away in a drawer. This is a working document and should be read every day for at least one month so you buy into it and it becomes your new way of life. If and when things get tough, read it again for another month. Always have it close to hand while you study and show it to your partner, kids (if you have them), friends and parents. This will help you to see your goal through.

In today’s high speed society, support workers who have the ability to mend PC’s and networks, plus give daily help to users, are essential in all areas of industry. Our requirement for better qualified personnel is enhanced, as we become vastly more reliant on PC’s in the modern world.

How can we go about making a good decision then? With all this potential, we’ll need to know where to be looking – and what we should be searching for.

A ridiculously large number of organisations only look at the plaque to hang on your wall, and completely miss the reasons for getting there – getting yourself a new job or career. Your focus should start with the end goal – don’t get hung-up on the training vehicle. It’s a sad testimony to the sales skills of many companies, but the majority of trainees begin programs that seem spectacular in the marketing materials, but which deliver a career which doesn’t satisfy. Try talking to typical college students for a real eye-opener. It’s a good idea to understand the expectations of your industry. Which particular accreditations you’ll be required to have and how you’ll go about getting some commercial experience. It’s definitely worth spending time thinking about how far you think you’ll want to progress your career as it will often present a very specific set of exams. Always seek guidance and advice from a skilled advisor, even if you have to pay – it’s much safer and cheaper to find out at the start whether your choices are appropriate, instead of discovering following two years of study that you aren’t going to enjoy the job you’ve chosen and have to return to the start of another program.

You should only consider learning programmes that move onto industry approved qualifications. There are far too many trainers promoting unknown ‘in-house’ certificates that are essentially useless when you start your job-search. From an employer’s viewpoint, only top businesses such as Microsoft, Adobe, CompTIA or Cisco (as an example) provide enough commercial weight. Anything less won’t make the grade.

Usually, trainers will provide a big box of books. It’s not a very interesting way to learn and not a very good way of taking things in. Our ability to remember is increased when multiple senses are involved – this has been an accepted fact in expert circles for as long as we can remember. Programs are now found via DVD-ROM discs, where your computer becomes the centre of your learning. Video streaming means you are able to see your instructors showing you how to perform the required skill, with some practice time to follow – via the interactive virtual lab’s. It’s imperative to see the type of training provided by the company you’re considering. You’ll want to see that they include instructor-led video demonstrations with virtual practice-lab’s. Avoid training that is purely online. Physical CD or DVD ROM materials are preferable where offered, so you can use them wherever and whenever you want – and not be totally reliant on a quality and continuous internet connection.

Proper support should never be taken lightly – locate a good company that includes 24×7 access, as anything else will annoy you and definitely hold up your pace and restrict your intake. Try and find training where you can access help at any time of day or night (irrespective of whether it’s the wee hours on Sunday morning!) Ensure you get access directly to professional tutors and not access to a call-in service which takes messages – so you’re waiting for tutors to call you back when it’s convenient for them. World-class organisations offer an internet-based 24×7 facility utilising a variety of support centres across the globe. You will have a simple interface that seamlessly selects the best facility available at any time of day or night: Support when you need it. If you accept anything less than support round-the-clock, you’ll regret it very quickly. You may not need it during the night, but what about weekends, early mornings or even late evenings at some point?

Adding in the cost of exams upfront then including an exam guarantee is a common method with a number of training colleges. But look at the facts: Clearly it isn’t free – you’re still footing the bill for it – it’s just been included in your package price. People who take each progressive exam, funding them one at a time are much better placed to get through first time. They are mindful of what they’ve paid and prepare more appropriately to be ready for the task. Doesn’t it make more sense to hold on to your money and pay for the exam when you take the exam, instead of paying a premium to a training company, and also to sit exams more locally – instead of the remote centre that’s convenient only to the trainer? Paying in advance for examinations (which also includes interest if you’ve taken out a loan) is madness. Resist being talked into filling the training company’s account with additional funds simply to help their cash-flow! There are those who hope that you won’t get to do them all – but they won’t refund the cash. Also, exam guarantees often have very little value. The majority of organisations won’t pay again for an exam until you’ve completely satisfied them that you’re ready this time. On average, exams cost around the 112 pounds mark last year through local VUE or Pro-metric centres throughout the country. So don’t be talked into shelling out hundreds or thousands of pounds more for ‘Exam Guarantees’, when common sense dictates that the responsible approach is study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams.

A number of students are under the impression that the state educational path is the way they should go. Why then is commercial certification beginning to overtake it? As demand increases for knowledge about more and more complex technology, the IT sector has moved to specialist courses only available through the vendors themselves – namely companies like Microsoft, CISCO, Adobe and CompTIA. This often comes in at a fraction of the cost and time. Essentially, 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 concentrate on the fundamentally important skill-sets (with some necessary background) – without trying to cram in everything else (as degree courses are known to do). Think about if you were the employer – and you wanted someone who could provide a specific set of skills. Which is the most straightforward: Trawl through loads of academic qualifications from graduate applicants, having to ask what each has covered and which commercial skills they’ve mastered, or choose particular accreditations that exactly fulfil your criteria, and draw up from that who you want to speak to. You’ll then be able to concentrate on getting a feel for the person at interview – instead of having to work out if they can do the job.

Massive developments are coming via technology over the next few decades – and the industry becomes more ground-breaking every year. It’s a common misapprehension that the increase in technology we’ve been going through is cooling down. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are huge changes to come, and the internet in particular will become an increasingly dominant part of our lives. Should lifestyle be around the top on your goal sheet, then you’ll welcome the news that the regular income of a typical IT worker is much higher than salaries in other market sectors. Experts agree that there’s a great UK-wide search for certified IT specialists. In addition as the industry constantly develops, it is likely this pattern will continue for a good while yet.