| Thoughts on Networking Training Revealed |
| Written by Jason Kendall |
| Sunday, 31 January 2010 09:15 |
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If it weren't for a constant influx of knowledgeable network and PC support personnel, business in the UK (and around the world) would surely grind to a halt. There is an ever growing requirement for people to support both the systems and the users themselves. Because we become massively more dependent on advanced technology, we simultaneously find ourselves increasingly dependent on the skilled and qualified networking professionals, who keep the systems going.
If it weren't for a constant influx of knowledgeable network and PC support personnel, business in the UK (and around the world) would surely grind to a halt. There is an ever growing requirement for people to support both the systems and the users themselves. Because we become massively more dependent on advanced technology, we simultaneously find ourselves increasingly dependent on the skilled and qualified networking professionals, who keep the systems going. A lot of training providers will only provide basic 9am till 6pm support (maybe a little earlier or later on certain days); not many go late into the evening (after 8-9pm) or cover weekends properly. You'll be waiting ages for an answer with email based support, and phone support is often to a call-centre which will just take down the issue and email it over to their technical team - who'll call back sometime over the next 1-3 days, when it suits them. This is not a lot of use if you're stuck with a particular problem and have a one hour time-slot in which to study. If you look properly, you'll find the top providers which provide their students direct-access support 24x7 - even in the middle of the night. If you accept anything less than support round-the-clock, you'll end up kicking yourself. It may be that you don't use it late at night, but you're bound to use weekends, late evenings or early mornings. Make sure you don't get caught-up, as can often be the case, on the training process. You're not training for the sake of training; this is about employment. You need to remain focused on where you want to go. You may train for one year and then end up doing the job for 20 years. Don't make the error of opting for what may seem to be an 'interesting' training program and then spend decades in an unrewarding career! It's well worth a long chat to see what industry will expect from you. Which precise exams they'll want you to gain and in what way you can gain some industry experience. It's also worth spending time thinking about how far you think you'll want to progress your career as often it can force you to choose a particular set of exams. We'd recommend you seek advice from a professional advisor before making your final decision on some particular study program, so there's little doubt that the specific package will give the skill-set required for your career choice. Let's face it: There really is pretty much no individual job security anywhere now; there's only industry or business security - companies can just drop any single member of staff if it suits their business interests. In times of increasing skills shortages coupled with high demand areas however, we often discover a newer brand of market-security; as fuelled by the constant growth conditions, companies just can't get the staff required. The IT skills-gap in the United Kingdom is standing at approximately twenty six percent, according to the most recent e-Skills survey. That means for each four job positions existing across computing, we have only 3 certified professionals to fulfil that role. This disquieting fact shows the requirement for more appropriately accredited computing professionals in the United Kingdom. Because the IT sector is evolving at such a rate, there really isn't any other sector worth investigating as a retraining vehicle. Sometimes men and women assume that the state educational system is still the most effective. So why are commercially accredited qualifications beginning to overtake it? With a growing demand for specific technological expertise, industry has moved to the specialised core-skills learning only available through the vendors themselves - in other words companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA. This usually turns out to involve less time and financial outlay. Obviously, a necessary amount of background information needs to be learned, but precise specialised knowledge in the required areas gives a vendor educated student a real head start. Think about if you were the employer - and your company needed a person with some very particular skills. What's the simplest way to find the right person: Wade your way through loads of academic qualifications from various applicants, struggling to grasp what they've learned and which workplace skills they have, or choose particular accreditations that exactly fulfil your criteria, and make your short-list from that. You can then focus on how someone will fit into the team at interview - rather than establishing whether they can do a specific task. |