The construction of the website only scratches the surface of the skill set required though – to drive traffic to the site, maintain its content, and work with dynamic database-driven sites, you will need additional programming skills, such as HTML, PHP and MySQL. It would also be a good idea to gain a good understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and E-Commerce.
Don’t put too much store, as can often be the case, on the certification itself. Training is not an end in itself; you should be geared towards the actual job at the end of it. Stay focused on what it is you want to achieve. Students often train for a single year but end up doing the job for 20 years. Don’t make the error of choosing what sounds like a program of interest to you only to spend 20 years doing a job you don’t like!
Take time to understand how you feel about career development, earning potential, and whether you intend to be quite ambitious. It makes sense to understand what (if any) sacrifices you’ll need to make for a particular role, what particular accreditations they want you to have and where you’ll pick-up experience from. Prior to embarking on a particular training course, trainees are advised to talk through specific market needs with an experienced advisor, so as to be sure the training program covers all the bases.
The sometimes daunting task of finding your first job can be made easier by training colleges, through a Job Placement Assistance facility. Often, this feature is bigged up too much, because it is actually not that hard for any motivated and trained individual to get a job in the IT environment – because companies everywhere are seeking trained staff.
Having said that, it’s important to have help with your CV and interview techniques though; also we would encourage any student to work on polishing up their CV as soon as they start a course – don’t procrastinate and leave it for when you’re ready to start work. It’s possible that you won’t have even got to the exam time when you will be offered your first junior support role; but this can’t and won’t happen if interviewers don’t get sight of your CV. Generally, you’ll receive better results from a specialised and independent local recruitment service than any training company’s national service, because they will understand the local industry and employment needs.
In a nutshell, if you put as much hard work into securing a position as into training, you won’t have any problems. A number of students bizarrely invest a great deal of time on their training course and then call a halt once certified and seem to expect employers to find them.
Only consider study programmes that’ll move onto industry recognised accreditations. There’s an endless list of small companies pushing minor ‘in-house’ certificates which will prove unusable in the real world. Only nationally recognised examinations from the major players like Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe and CompTIA will open the doors to employers.
How can job security really exist anymore? Here in the UK, where business constantly changes its mind on a day-to-day basis, it seems increasingly unlikely. Security can now only exist through a rapidly increasing market, fuelled by a lack of trained workers. These circumstances create the right setting for market-security – a more attractive situation all round.
Reviewing the computer business, the most recent e-Skills investigation highlighted a more than 26 percent shortage in trained professionals. Quite simply, we can only fill just 3 out of each 4 job positions in the computing industry. Gaining in-depth commercial Information Technology certification is therefore an effective route to realise a long-term and satisfying career. We can’t imagine if a better time or market conditions is ever likely to exist for getting certified in this quickly expanding and blossoming business.
Sometimes people assume that the tech college or university track is still the best way into IT. So why then are commercial certificates slowly and steadily replacing it? The IT sector is now aware that to cover the necessary commercial skill-sets, the right accreditation from companies such as Microsoft, CISCO, Adobe and CompTIA most often has much more specialised relevance – at a far reduced cost both money and time wise. They do this by concentrating on the skill-sets required (together with a relevant amount of background knowledge,) instead of going into the heightened depths of background ‘padding’ that degree courses often do (because the syllabus is so wide).
In simple terms: Commercial IT certifications let employers know exactly what you’re capable of – it says what you do in the title: as an example – I am a ‘Microsoft Certified Professional’ in ‘Planning and Maintaining a Windows 2003 Infrastructure’. Consequently an employer can identify just what their needs are and what certifications will be suitable to deal with those needs.
(C) Jason Kendall. Pop over to LearningLolly.com for in-depth advice on Web Designer Training and Adobe Dreamweaver Training.
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