Legal and Internet Marketing

Congratulations! As you’re looking at this it’s likely you’re thinking about retraining for a new career – so you’ve already done more than most. Only one in ten of us are content with our jobs, but most complain but just stay there. So, why not be one of the few who actually do something about it.

When considering retraining, it’s vital to first define your requirements from the position you’d like to train for. You need to know that things would be a lot better before much time and effort is spent re-directing your life. It’s good sense to regard the big picture first, to make an informed decision:

* Do you like to work collaborating with people? Is that as part of a team or with a lot of new people? Possibly operating on your own on specific tasks would be more your thing?

* What do you require from the market sector you work in? (Things do change – look at the building trade, or banks for example.)

* Once you’ve trained, how many years work do anticipate working, and will the market sector offer you that opportunity?

* Are you concerned with regard to the chance of getting new work, and keeping a job until you plan to retire?

We would advise that you consider Information Technology – it’s well known that it is one of the few growth sectors. It’s not all nerdy people looking at computer screens constantly – naturally some IT jobs demand that, but the majority of roles are carried out by people like you and me who get on very well.

The perhaps intimidating chore of securing your first job is often made easier by training colleges, through a Job Placement Assistance service. Often, too much is made of this feature, as it’s relatively easy for well qualified and focused men and women to get a job in this industry – because there’s a great need for skilled employees.

CV and Interview advice and support is sometimes offered (alternatively, check out one of our sites for help). Ensure you update that dusty old CV immediately – not after you’ve qualified!

It’s not uncommon to find that junior support roles are offered to people who are in the process of training and haven’t even passed a single exam yet. This will at least get you into the ‘maybe’ pile of CV’s – rather than the ‘No’ pile.

Most often, a specialist locally based recruitment consultancy (who will, of course, be keen to place you to receive their commission) is going to give you a better service than a centralised training company’s service. They should, of course, also be familiar with the local area and commercial needs.

To bottom line it, as long as you focus the same level of energy into securing your first IT position as into studying, you’re not going to hit many challenges. A number of students strangely spend hundreds of hours on their training and studies and then just stop once qualified and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.

Of course: a training course or a qualification isn’t what this is about; the career you’re training for is. Far too many training organisations completely prioritise the piece of paper.

It’s common, in some situations, to thoroughly enjoy one year of training and then spend 20 miserable years in a job you hate, as a consequence of not performing the correct research when you should’ve – at the outset.

You must also consider your feelings on earning potential, career development, plus your level of ambition. It makes sense to understand what (if any) sacrifices you’ll need to make for a particular role, what exams are required and where you’ll pick-up experience from.

It’s good advice for all students to speak with an industry professional before following a particular study program. This gives some measure of assurance that it contains the commercially required skills for the chosen career path.

In most cases, your normal person has no idea in what direction to head in a computing career, let alone which market they should be considering getting trained in.

Perusing long lists of different and confusing job titles is a complete waste of time. Surely, most of us have no idea what our own family members do for a living – so we have no hope of understanding the ins and outs of any specific IT role.

Getting to the right answer really only appears through a thorough investigation of many unique criteria:

* Personality plays an important role – what things get your juices flowing, and what are the areas that really turn you off.

* Are you driven to re-train for a specific motive – i.e. do you aim to work from home (maybe self-employment?)?

* What salary and timescale requirements you may have?

* Learning what the main work types and markets are – plus how they’re different to each other.

* The time and energy you’ll commit your training.

The bottom line is, your only chance of investigating all this is from an in-depth discussion with an advisor or professional that has enough background to lead you to the correct decision.

Watch out that all accreditations you’re considering doing will be commercially viable and are up-to-date. The ‘in-house’ certifications provided by many companies are not normally useful in gaining employment.

Unless your qualification is issued by a company like Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe, then it’s likely it will be commercially useless – because it won’t give an employer any directly-useable skills.

(C) 2009. Browse LearningLolly.com for quality career tips on Computer Forsensics Training and The Internet Is 40.