Nice One! Hitting upon this feature proves you must be contemplating your career, and if you’re considering retraining then you’ve already got further than almost everybody else. It’s a frightening thought that hardly any of us consider ourselves fulfilled and satisfied with our jobs – yet the vast majority of us will take no corrective action. Why not liberate yourself and do something – you have the rest of your life to enjoy it.
We’d strongly advise that in advance of taking any study program, you discuss your plans with a person who has knowledge of the industry and can point you in the right direction. They can look at aspects of your personality and assist in finding the right role for you:
* Do you like working on your own or perhaps being around others is vital for your sanity?
* Are you thinking carefully about which area you could be employed in? (In this economy, it’s vital to get it right.)
* Is this the final time you plan to retrain, and therefore, will this new career allow you to do that?
* 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?
It’s important that you don’t overlook IT – everyone knows that it’s on the grow. It’s not all nerdy people gazing at their PC’s the whole time – we know some IT jobs demand that, but the majority of roles are filled with people like you and me who get on very well.
Locating job security in the current climate is very rare. Businesses often remove us out of the workforce at a moment’s notice – as long as it fits their needs.
Where there are growing skills deficits mixed with increasing demand though, we often locate a newer brand of security in the marketplace; as fuelled by the constant growth conditions, organisations find it hard to locate enough staff.
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.
Accomplishing the appropriate commercial computer certification is thus a quick route to succeed in a long-lasting as well as enjoyable livelihood.
In actuality, acquiring professional IT skills over the next year or two is likely the safest choice of careers you could make.
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.
Many companies enrol you into a 2 or 3 year study programme, and drop-ship the materials to you piecemeal as you complete each section or exam. This sounds reasonable until you consider the following:
What would their reaction be if you find it difficult to do each and every exam at the proposed pace? Sometimes their preference of study order doesn’t come as naturally as some other structure would for you.
To be in the best situation you would have all the learning modules posted to your home before you even start; every single thing! Thus avoiding any future problems that could impede your capability of finishing.
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!
You need to keep your eye on what you want to achieve, and then build your training requirements around that – don’t do it back-to-front. Keep your eyes on your goals and begin studying for a job you’ll still be enjoying many years from now.
Have a chat with a skilled advisor who knows about the sector you’re looking at, and could provide a detailed description of what to expect in that role. Getting all these things right long before beginning a retraining program will prevent a lot of wasted time and effort.
Don’t listen to any salesperson that offers any particular course without a thorough investigation to better understand your current abilities and level of experience. Make sure they can draw from a wide-enough array of training so they’re actually equipped to give you a program that suits you..
Often, the starting point of study for someone with some experience will be vastly different to someone just starting out.
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. Go to LearningLolly.com for in-depth ideas. www.learninglolly.com or Career Training.
