Training for your CompTIA A+ covers four specialised areas – you need to pass exams in two of these areas to be seen as competent in A+. This is why, the majority of colleges limit their course to 2 of the 4 sectors. Our opinion is this is selling you short – yes you’ll have qualified, but knowing about the others will give you a distinct advantage in your working life, where knowledge of all four will be necessary. This is why you need education in all four areas.

As well as being taught how to build PC’s and fix them, students on A+ courses will have instruction on how to work in antistatic conditions, along with remote access, fault finding and diagnostics.

If you would like to be the person who works for a larger company – fixing and supporting networks, you should include CompTIA Network+ to your training package, or alternatively look at doing an MCSA or MCSE with Microsoft in order to have a deeper understanding of the way networks work.

The right sort of training package will undoubtedly also include wholly authorised exam preparation packages.

Confirm that the simulated exams are not only asking questions in the right areas, but additionally ask them in the way the real exams will ask them. It throws people if the phraseology and format is completely different.

Ensure that you request some practice exams so you’ll be able to check your comprehension at all times. Simulations of exams help to build your confidence – so the actual exam is much easier.

A competent and specialised advisor (in direct contrast to a salesman) will ask questions and seek to comprehend your abilities and experience. This is useful for calculating your study start-point.

Sometimes, the training inception point for a trainee with experience is massively dissimilar to the student with no experience.

Where this will be your opening attempt at studying for an IT examination then you should consider whether to begin with some basic PC skills training first.

A service that several companies offer is job placement assistance. This is to help you get your first commercial position. However sometimes too much is made of this feature, because it is actually not that hard for any focused and well taught person to land work in the IT environment – as employers are keen to find appropriately skilled employees.

Bring your CV up to date as soon as possible however – look to your training company for advice on how to do this. Don’t wait till the exams have actually been passed.

Quite often, you will get your first job whilst still on the course (even in the early stages). If you haven’t updated your CV to say what you’re studying – or it’s not getting in front of interviewers, then you won’t even be considered!

Actually, a local IT focused employment agency (who will, of course, be keen to place you to receive their commission) will perform better than any sector of a centralised training facility. It also stands to reason that they’ll be familiar with the area and local employers better.

Please be sure that you don’t conscientiously work through your course materials, only to stop and leave it up to everyone else to secure your first position. Stand up for yourself and start looking for yourself. Put as much time and energy into landing a good job as you did to get trained.

Wouldn’t it be great to know for sure that our jobs will always be safe and our work futures are protected, but the growing reality for most sectors in the UK right now seems to be that there is no security anymore.

When we come across increasing skills shortfalls and growing demand however, we often hit upon a newer brand of security in the marketplace; driven by a continual growth, organisations struggle to find the influx of staff needed.

Reviewing the Information Technology (IT) business, the recent e-Skills survey highlighted a 26 percent shortage in trained professionals. To explain it in a different way, this shows that the UK is only able to source three qualified staff for every 4 jobs existing today.

Fully skilled and commercially educated new workers are accordingly at a complete premium, and it looks like they will be for many years longer.

Undoubtedly, this really is a fabulous time to retrain into Information Technology (IT).

Author: Scott Edwards. Check out MCTS Course or www.CareerRetraining.co.uk/kcaret.html.

Tags: advice, Career, computer, Education, hardware, hobbies, home, Job, Jobs and Careers, self improvement, software, technology, training, web, work

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Jobs and Careers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.