You should feel pleased that you’re on the right track! A fraction of the population enjoy their work and find it stimulating, but vast numbers simply moan about it and that’s it. The fact that you’re here means it’s probable that you’ve a personal interest in re-training, so well done to you. Now you just need to get busy to find your direction.

Prior to considering any career courses, look for an advisor who can help you sort out what to look for. Someone who has the ability to get an understanding of your personality, and find out the best career for you to work towards:

* Do you see yourself dealing with people? Would that be with a small ‚tightly-knit‘ team or with a lot of new people? Maybe working on your own on specific tasks may be your preference?

* What’s important that you get from the area of industry you choose? (If it’s stability you’re after, you might think twice about banks or the building industry right now.)

* How long a career do you hope to have once retrained, and can your chosen industry give you the confidence that will happen?

* Are you worried with regard to the possibility of getting new work, and being gainfully employed right up to retirement?

The most significant market sector in Great Britain to tick all of the above boxes is the IT industry. There’s a need for more skilled people in this market, – take a look at any jobs website and you’ll discover what we mean. Don’t let people tell you it’s all techie people looking at their computerscreens all day long – it’s much more diverse than that. Most of the people in the industry are just like you and me, with well paid and stimulating jobs.

If you’re like many of the students we talk to then you probably enjoy fairly practical work – a ‚hands-on‘ type. If you’re anything like us, the painful task of reading endless manuals would be considered as a last resort, but you’d hate it. Consider interactive, multimedia study if book-based learning really isn’t your style. Studies in learning psychology have shown that much more of what we learn in remembered when we involve as many senses as possible, and we take action to use what we’ve learned.

Fully interactive motion videos utilising video demo’s and practice lab’s will forever turn you away from traditional book study. And they’re a lot more fun to do. Be sure to get a look at some courseware examples from the training company. You should ask for slide-shows, instructor-led videos and virtual practice lab’s for your new skills.

Opt for CD and DVD ROM based physical training media where possible. You’re then protected from internet connection failure and issues with signal quality.

Most people don’t even think to ask about a painfully important area – how their company actually breaks down and delivers the courseware sections, and into how many bits. Individual deliveries for each training module piece by piece, according to your own speed is the normal way of receiving your courseware. This sounds logical, but you must understand the following: What could you expect if you didn’t actually complete everything at the required speed? Sometimes their preference of study order doesn’t work as well as an alternative path could be.

An ideal situation would be to have all the training materials packed off to you immediately; the complete package! Then, nothing can hinder your capacity to get everything done.

So many training providers only look at the plaque to hang on your wall, and completely avoid what it’s all actually about – which is of course employment. Always begin with the final destination in mind – don’t make the vehicle more important than the destination. It’s a sad fact, but the majority of trainees kick-off study that often sounds spectacular from the syllabus guide, but which delivers a career that doesn’t satisfy. Just ask several university leavers for a real eye-opener.

Set targets for what you want to earn and the level of your ambition. This can often control what precise qualifications will be expected and what industry will expect from you in return. Chat with a skilled advisor who knows about the sector you’re looking at, and is able to give you a detailed description of what tasks are going to make up a typical day for you. Establishing this before beginning a learning path will prevent a lot of wasted time and effort.

At times people don’t really get what IT means. It is stimulating, innovative, and means you’re a part of the huge progress of technology that will impact the whole world for generations to come. Many people are of the opinion that the increase in technology we’ve been going through is easing off. This couldn’t be more wrong. Terrific advances are ahead of us, and the internet particularly will be the most effective tool in our lives.

Let’s not forget that the average salary in the IT sector in Great Britain is noticeably more than average salaries nationally, therefore you will most likely receive significantly more once qualified in IT, than you’d get in most other industries. Because the IT market sector is still emerging at an unprecedented rate, the chances are that the requirement for professionally qualified and skilled IT workers will continue actively for quite some time to come.

Finding your first job in the industry can be a little easier with the help of a Job Placement Assistance service. The honest truth is that it isn’t so complicated as you might think to land your first job – as long as you’ve got the necessary skills and qualifications; because there’s still a great need for IT skills in the UK today.

Help with your CV and interview techniques may be available (if not, see one of our sites for help). Make sure you polish up your CV immediately – not after you’ve qualified! Getting your CV considered is far better than not even being known about. A decent number of junior positions are offered to people (who’ve only just left first base.) If you don’t want to travel too far to work, then you may well find that a specialist locally based employment agency can generally be more appropriate than some national concern, for they’re far more likely to be familiar with what’s available near you.

In a nutshell, if you put the same amount of effort into securing a job as into training, you won’t find it too challenging. A number of students inexplicably spend hundreds of hours on their course materials and then just stop once qualified and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.