Market and Investment

Training for your CompTIA A+ covers 4 different sectors - the requirement is exam passes in just two sectors to be seen as competent in A+. Because of this, most training providers limit their course to 2 of the training options. Our opinion is this is selling you short - yes you’ll have qualified, but experience of all four will prepare you more fully for when you’re in your working life, where you’ll need to know about all of them. This is why you need education in the whole course.

When you embark on the CompTIA A+, you’ll be taught how to work in antistatic conditions and build and fix computers. Diagnostic techniques and fault finding are also on the syllabus, as is remote access.

You might also choose to consider adding Network+ training to your A+ as you’ll then be in a position to take care of computer networks, which means greater employment benefits.

One crafty way that training providers make a lot more is by charging for exams up-front and offering an exam guarantee. This sounds impressive, but is it really:

You’ll be charged for it ultimately. It’s definitely not free - they’ve simply charged more for the whole training package.

Qualifying on the first ‘go’ is what everyone wants to do. Entering examinations when it’s appropriate and funding them one at a time makes it far more likely you’ll pass first time - you revise thoroughly and are mindful of the investment you’ve made.

Doesn’t it make more sense to find the best exam deal or offer at the time, rather than coughing up months or even a year or two in advance to a training college, and to do it locally - instead of the remote centre that’s convenient only to the trainer?

A great deal of money is netted by a significant number of organisations that get money upfront for exam fees. For quite legitimate reasons, a number of students don’t get to do their exams and so they pocket the rest. Surprising as it sounds, providers exist that actually bank on it - as that’s how they make a lot of their profit.

You should fully understand that re-takes via organisations with an ‘Exam Guarantee’ are monitored with tight restrictions. They’ll insist that you take mock exams first until you’ve demonstrated an excellent ability to pass.

Shelling out hundreds or thousands of pounds on ‘Exam Guarantees’ is remiss - when a commitment to studying and the use of authorised exam preparation tools is actually the key to your success.

We’d all like to believe that our jobs will remain secure and our future is protected, but the growing reality for the majority of jobs around the UK today appears to be that security may be a thing of the past.

Security only exists now in a quickly rising market, driven forward by work-skills shortages. It’s this alone that creates the appropriate environment for market-security - definitely a more pleasing situation.

The Information Technology (IT) skills-gap around the United Kingdom currently stands at roughly 26 percent, as shown by the latest e-Skills study. Accordingly, for each four job positions available throughout IT, employers are only able to locate certified professionals for 3 of the 4.

Gaining the appropriate commercial IT qualification is accordingly an effective route to realise a life-long and worthwhile occupation.

In actuality, acquiring professional IT skills throughout the years to come is most likely the safest career move you’ll ever make.

Qualifications from the commercial sector are now, most definitely, beginning to replace the traditional routes into the industry - but why is this?

With university education costs becoming a tall order for many, and the industry’s growing opinion that vendor-based training most often has much more commercial relevance, there’s been a big surge in CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA accredited training paths that create knowledgeable employees for much less time and money.

Patently, a necessary amount of background information needs to be learned, but essential specialised knowledge in the areas needed gives a commercially educated student a massive advantage.

Imagine if you were an employer - and your company needed a person with some very particular skills. Which is the most straightforward: Go through loads of academic qualifications from hopeful applicants, struggling to grasp what they’ve learned and which commercial skills have been attained, or select a specialised number of commercial certifications that precisely match your needs, and make your short-list from that. You can then focus on how someone will fit into the team at interview - rather than on the depth of their technical knowledge.

Of course: a training itself or a qualification isn’t the end-goal; the particular job that you want to end up in is. Too many training companies place too much importance on the qualification itself.

Imagine training for just one year and then end up doing a job for a lifetime. Don’t make the error of taking what may be a very ‘interesting’ program only to waste your life away with something you don’t even enjoy!

It’s essential to keep your focus on what you want to achieve, and then build your training requirements around that - don’t do it the other way round. Keep your eyes on your goals - making sure you’re training for a career that’ll reward you for many long and fruitful years.

Seek guidance and advice from an experienced professional, even if there’s a fee involved - it’s usually much cheaper and safer to discover early on whether something is going to suit and interest you, instead of discovering following two years of study that you aren’t going to enjoy the job you’ve chosen and have to return to the start of another program.