Congratulate yourself that you’re on the right track! Just ten percent of people say they enjoy their work, but a huge number simply moan about it and that’s it. Because you’ve done research we have a hunch that you’re at least considering retraining, which means you’re already ahead of the pack. What comes next is find out more and then take action.

When considering retraining, it’s important to first define what you want and don’t want from the career you would like to get. Ensure that things would be a lot better before much time and effort is spent re-directing your life. So much better to look at the end goal first, to make the right judgements:

* Do you like to work collaborating with people? Would you prefer to work with a small team or with many new people? Possibly operating on your own with your own methodology would be more your thing?

* Banking and building are a little shaky at the moment, so it’s important to look very carefully at what sector will be best for you?

* Once your training has been completed, would you like your skills to take you through to retirement?

* Would it be useful for your training course to be in an area where you know you’ll have a job until your pension kicks in?

We request you to have a good look at Information Technology – there are increasingly more jobs than workers to do them, plus it’s one of the few choices of career where the industry is still growing. In contrast to the beliefs of some, IT is not full of nerdy individuals gazing at their computer screens the whole day (if you like the sound of that though, they do exist.) The vast majority of roles are filled by people like you and me who enjoy a very nice lifestyle due to better than average wages.

Without a doubt: There’s pretty much no individual job security now; there’s only market or sector security – companies can just drop any single member of staff if it suits the business’ trade needs.

Of course, a marketplace with high growth, with a constant demand for staff (as there is a growing shortage of properly qualified professionals), enables the possibility of proper job security.

Looking at the computer business, the 2006 e-Skills analysis highlighted a more than 26 percent shortfall of skilled workers. To explain it in a different way, this highlights that the UK only has three qualified staff for each four job positions existing now.

This single truth alone underpins why the country urgently requires considerably more new trainees to join the IT industry.

We can’t imagine if a better time or market conditions could exist for getting trained into this hugely emerging and blossoming business.

An area that’s often missed by new students considering a training program is the issue of ‘training segmentation’. This is essentially how the program is broken down into parts to be delivered to you, which vastly changes the point you end up at.

Delivery by courier of each element one stage at a time, according to your exam schedule is how things will normally arrive. This sounds logical, but you must understand the following:

What happens when you don’t complete every exam? And what if the order provided doesn’t meet your requirements? Without any fault on your part, you mightn’t complete everything fast enough and therefore not end up with all the modules.

Put simply, the best option is to get an idea of what they recommend as an ideal study order, but get all the study materials at the start. Everything is then in your possession if you don’t manage to finish within their ideal time-table.

An all too common mistake that many potential students make is to look for the actual course to take, and take their eye off the end result they want to achieve. Colleges are brimming over with direction-less students that chose an ‘interesting’ course – in place of something that could gain them an enjoyable career or job.

Imagine training for just one year and then end up doing a job for a lifetime. Ensure you avoid the fatal error of choosing what sounds like a program of interest to you only to waste your life away with a job you hate!

Make sure you investigate your feelings on career development, earning potential, and how ambitious you are. You need to know what industry expects from you, what particular qualifications are required and how you’ll gain real-world experience.

Seek out help from a professional advisor that ‘gets’ the commercial realities of the area you’re interested in, and will be able to provide ‘A typical day in the life of’ synopsis of what you’ll actually be doing during your working week. It’s good sense to understand whether or not this is right for you long before your course begins. What’s the point in kicking off your training and then find you’ve taken the wrong route.

A competent and professional advisor (vs a salesman) will want to thoroughly discuss your current experience level and abilities. This is vital for understanding your study start-point.

Remember, if in the past you’ve acquired any accreditation or direct-experience, then you may be able to pick-up at a different starting-point to a trainee with no history to speak of.

Where this will be your first effort at IT study then you might also want to cut your teeth on a user-skills course first.

(C) Jason Kendall. Try LearningLolly.com for superb advice. CCNA Course or Adult Career Training.

If you’re looking for a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) training course, you should know that there are many different types of training; some are much better than others. You’ll come across a range of courses, whether you’re new to the industry, or an experienced technician ready to formalise your skills with certification.

If you’re considering joining the world of IT and this is your first experience, it’s likely you’ll need to have some coaching prior to tackling the MCP’s (Microsoft Certified Professional exams) needed to get qualified at the MCSA level. Search for a training organisation that will create an ideal program to help you – ask to have a conversation with an industry expert to determine your optimum route.

Workshops can be offered as a big positive benefit by many trainers. After a good chat with most IT students that have tried them out, you’ll find they generally end up being seen as a waste of time because of many things:

* All the travelling required – multiple trips and usually hundreds of miles each time.

* Workshop availability; frequently Monday to Friday and sometimes two to three days together. This can be difficult to get the time off work.

* I think you’d agree that we usually discover 4 weeks holiday each year is not really enough. Knock off a big chunk of this for educational classes and you’ll experience even more problems.

* Training events invariably become too big.

* The ‘pace’ – workshops often feature students of different skill, so there is often tension between students that want a quicker pace to those who want to go a little slower.

* Count the cost of all the travelling, food, parking and accommodation and you’ll be in for a big surprise. Attendees talk of increased costs of between several hundred and a couple of thousand pounds. Break it down – and understand where they’re coming from.

* Maintaining the privacy of our training is often very important to most attendees. You don’t want to sacrifice any lift up the ladder, wage increases or accomplishment at work just because you’re retraining. If your employer knows you’re putting yourself through training in a different industry, what are they going to be thinking?

* Don’t think it’s unusual for trainees to keep a question to themselves – simply because they’re surrounded by fellow attendees.

* If you occasionally work elsewhere in the country for several days at a time, imagine the increased difficulty in getting to the needed events, as time becomes even more scarce.

Wouldn’t it be better to watch on-screen and learn with instructors one-on-one from pre-made modules, working on them when it’s convenient for you, not someone else.

Just imagine… Utilising a laptop then you could work in the garden, a park, or just outside. And 24 hr-a-day support is only a web-browser click away if you hit challenges.

There’s no need to take notes – all the lessons are prepared and laid out for you – ready to go. And if you want to repeat anything, it’s right there.

Put simply: You save money, avoid hassle, don’t waste time and completely avoid polluting the skies.

The market provides a glut of work available in the IT industry. Arriving at the correct choice in this uncertainty is generally problematic.

I mean, without any know-how of the IT industry, what chance is there for you to know what someone in a particular field does each day? And of course decide on what certification program will be most suitable for a successful result.

To get to the bottom of this, we need to discuss a number of different aspects:

* Your personality type and what you’re interested in – what kind of working tasks please or frustrate you.

* What is the time-frame for retraining?

* Is salary further up on your list of priorities than other factors.

* Because there are so many areas to train for in Information Technology – it’s wise to achieve a basic understanding of what sets them apart.

* What effort, commitment and time you’re prepared to commit your training.

Ultimately, the most intelligent way of covering these is through a meeting with an advisor or professional that knows the industry well enough to provide solid advice.

(C) 2009. Visit LearningLolly.com for in-depth information on MCSA 2003 Certification and MCSA Courses.