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PC and network support technicians are more and more sought after in this country, as organisations are becoming more reliant on their technical advice and fixing and repairing abilities. Because of the complex nature of technology, many more competent professionals are being sought to look after the various different areas we rely on.

Seeing as the UK computing market presents such an array of marvellous career development prospects for us – what sort of questions should we be asking and what aspects carry the most importance?

With so much choice, it’s not really surprising that the majority of trainees balk at what job they could be successful with. What is our likelihood of grasping the tasks faced daily in an IT career if we’ve never been there? Most likely we have never met anyone who performs the role either. Generally, the way to deal with this problem in the best manner stems from a full chat, covering several areas:

* Personality plays a significant part – what kind of areas spark your interest, and what are the areas that put a frown on your face.

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

* What salary and timescale needs that are important to you?

* Always think in-depth about the level of commitment required to get fully certified.

* You need to understand the differences across each individual training area.

Ultimately, the only real way of investigating all this is by means of a good talk with someone that knows the industry well enough to lead you to the correct decision.

We need to make this very clear: You absolutely must have proper 24×7 professional support from mentors and instructors. You’ll severely regret it if you don’t heed this. Always avoid training courses that only support trainees via an out-sourced call-centre message system after office-staff have gone home. Training schools will give you every excuse in the book why you don’t need this. The bottom line is – you want to be supported when you need the help – not at times when they find it cheaper to provide it.

We recommend that you search for training schools that utilise many support facilities across multiple time-zones. All of them should be combined to enable simple one-stop access and also round-the-clock access, when it suits you, with no hassle. Find a training provider that is worth purchasing from. Only true round-the-clock 24×7 support provides the necessary backup.

Often, trainers provide a bunch of books and manuals. This isn’t very interesting and not ideal for remembering. Our ability to remember is increased when we use multiple senses – learning experts have been saying this for as long as we can remember.

Search for a course where you’ll receive a library of DVD-ROM’s – you’ll begin by watching videos of instructors demonstrating the skills, followed by the chance to use virtual lab’s to practice your new skills. It makes sense to see examples of the courseware provided before you sign the purchase order. The minimum you should expect would be instructor-led video demonstrations and a variety of audio-visual and interactive sections.

Go for physical media such as CD or DVD ROM’s in all circumstances. This then avoids all the potential pitfalls with internet connection failure and issues with signal quality.

Workshops can be offered as a major benefit by a lot of training schools. When you talk to most computer industry students who’ve attended a few, you’ll find they generally end up being seen as a waste of time because of many things:

* Loads of travelling to and from the training centre – usually 100’s of miles.

* Asking for constant holidays or time off – many schools only offer Monday to Friday workshop availability – typically grouping 2 or 3 days together. This is generally difficult for those of us who work for a living, and this is made worse if travelling time is added into the mix.

* Most of us think 4 weeks off each year doesn’t go very far. Take away over half of it for study workshops and you’ll experience even more problems.

* Training classes sometimes get overly large as well.

* Many attendees want to progress quickly, but some need a more gentle learning curve and want to set their own pace that fits. This breeds tension and difficulty on many workshops.

* Rising travel prices – driving or taking public transport to the training premises plus over-night bed and breakfast can start to get expensive with each visit. With only five to ten workshops at a cost of 35 pounds for an over-night room, plus 40 pounds petrol and 15 pounds for food, that becomes a minimum of 450-900 pounds of hidden costs that we now have to fund.

* Do you want to risk the possibility of letting yourself be ignored for a lift up the ladder or salary hikes because you’re getting trained in a different area.

* We all avoid posing questions when surrounded by our fellow students – who wants to look like they’re the only one who doesn’t get it?

* It should be remembered that days in-centre become simply impossible to attend, where you work or live away for some of the month.

The best possible solution is watching a filmed lesson – with instructor-led learning available whenever it’s convenient for you. Study at home on your PC or why not in the garden on a laptop. If you’ve got questions, then use the provided 24×7 live support (that should’ve been packaged with any technical type of training.) It really doesn’t matter how often you would like to re-take a quiz or test, video tutors will never get annoyed or frustrated! Plus, in this situation, note-taking is gone forever. Everything is there for immediate use. Put simply: You avoid a bunch of hassle, save money and time, and steer clear of polluting the environment.

Huge changes are washing over technology over the next generation – and it only gets more exciting every day. We are really only just beginning to understand how all this will mould and change our lives. The way we correlate with the world as a whole will be significantly affected by technology and the web.

And keep in mind that on average, the income of a person in the IT industry across the UK is a lot better than in the rest of the economy, therefore you’ll probably gain significantly more as a trained IT professional, than you’d expect to earn elsewhere. Apparently there is no easing up for IT sector development in the UK. The market is still growing rapidly, and we don’t have anywhere near enough qualified skilled IT professionals to fill current job vacancies, so it’s not likely that this will change significantly for a good while yet.

CompTIA A+ consists of 4 training sections; you’re seen as an A+ achiever when you’ve passed the test for two of the four areas. For this reason, most training providers only have two of the courses on their syllabus. You’ll find that it’s necessary to have the information on each subject as many jobs will be looking for the skills and knowledge of each specialist area. It’s not essential to qualify in them all, however we’d advise that you at least have a working knowledge of every area.

A+ certification by itself will mean that you’re able to repair and fix stand alone Macs, computers and laptops; ones that are most often not part of a network – this generally applies to home use and small companies. You may also want to think about adding Network+ training to your A+ as you can then also look after networks of computers, which is where the bigger salaries are.

Understanding the most suitable career choice can be very hard – so where do we need to look and what are the questions we should raise?

An advisor that doesn’t dig around with lots of question – it’s more than likely they’re just a salesperson. If they push a particular product before looking at your personality and current experience level, then you know you’re being sold to. In some circumstances, the level to start at for someone with experience can be vastly different to someone without. Always consider starting with some basic Microsoft package and Windows skills first. It will usually make the slope up to the higher-levels a much more gentle.

Many trainers provide a bunch of books and manuals. This can be very boring and not a very good way of taking things in. If we can get all of our senses involved in our learning, our results will often be quite spectacular.

Learning is now available on CD and DVD discs, where everything is taught on your PC. Utilising the latest video technology, you can sit back and watch the teachers showing you precisely how to do something, and then have a go at it yourself – in a virtual lab environment. Each company you’re contemplating must be able to demonstrate samples of their training materials. Expect video tutorials, instructor led classes and many interactive sections.

Often, companies will only use purely on-line training; and while this is acceptable much of the time, imagine the problems if internet access is lost or you get intermittent problems and speed issues. It’s much safer to rely on DVD or CD discs which will solve that problem.

Student support is absolutely essential – look for a package providing 24×7 full access, as not obtaining this level of support will severely put a damper on the speed you move through things. Never buy training courses that only support you via a call-centre messaging service after office-staff have gone home. Companies will try to talk you round from this line of reasoning. Essentially – you want support at the appropriate time – not when it suits them.

World-class organisations provide a web-based 24×7 service involving many support centres over many time-zones. You will have an interface which switches seamlessly to the best choice of centres irrespective of the time of day: Support on demand. Never settle for a lower level of service. Support round-the-clock is the only way to go with IT study. Maybe burning the midnight-oil is not your thing; often though, we’re at work when traditional support if offered.

If there’s any chance you’ll be enrolling with a training academy that is still using ‘in-centre workshop days’ as part of their program, then you should know about these difficulties reported by many IT hopefuls:

* Recurrent long journeys – quite a distance away most times.

* Weekday only availability to workshops is usual, and with 2-3 days to book off work, this can be difficult for a lot of trainees who are working.

* Let’s not forget the lost vacation days. Usually we’re lucky to have twenty days annual leave. If over 50 percent is used in classes, then it doesn’t leave much for us and our families.

* Training workshops can ’sell out’ fast and can sometimes be too big – so they’re not personal enough.

* The pace of the class – workshops often feature students of varying skill, consequently tension can run high between the quicker-learners and those who want to go a little slower.

* Soaring travel costs – driving or taking public transport to the training facility together with several days bed and breakfast can start to get expensive with each visit. With only five to ten workshops at a cost of 35 pounds for an over-night room, plus a petrol cost of 40 pounds and food at 15.00, we arrive at four to nine hundred pounds of add-on cost.

* Maintaining the privacy of our training will be of paramount importance to a lot of students. Why would you want to lose potential advancement, pay-rises or success at your current job just because you’re retraining. If your employer knows that you’re undertaking training in a completely different market, what do you think they’ll do?

* Posing questions in a class full of students can make us a little uncomfortable. Surely, at some point, you’ve avoided asking a question just because you didn’t want to appear stupid?

* Don’t forget, workshops frequently become simply unreachable, when you live away for part of your week or month.

An altogether more elegant solution is based on viewing a ready-made, videoed workshop – with instructor-led learning available whenever it’s convenient for you. Ponder this… If you’ve got a laptop you can study wherever you want. And 24×7 support is just a web-browser away when you get challenged. You can re-watch and re-cover the study modules whenever you want to brush up. You also don’t need to take notes because you’ll always have access to the teaching. What could be simpler: Time and money is saved and travelling is avoided altogether; and of course you’ve got a much more relaxed learning environment.

We’d all like to believe that our jobs will always be secure and our work prospects are protected, but the growing reality for the majority of jobs in Great Britain at the moment seems to be that security just isn’t there anymore. We’re able though to locate security at market-level, by probing for areas in high demand, together with a shortage of skilled staff.

The Information Technology (IT) skills deficit in the UK is standing at approximately twenty six percent, according to the 2006 e-Skills analysis. Meaning that for each 4 job positions existing throughout computing, we’ve only got three properly trained pro’s to fulfil that role. This one truth alone highlights why the country needs a lot more workers to get trained and get into the IT industry. Quite simply, acquiring professional IT skills throughout the coming years is probably the best choice of careers you could make.