Should you be aspiring to become Cisco accredited, and you’re new to working with switches and routers, you most probably should start with the CCNA training. This will provide you with the necessary skills to set up and maintain routers. The world wide web is built up of many routers, and large companies with several locations also use them to keep their networks in touch.
Because routers join up networks, look for a course that features the basics on networks (CompTIA Network+ as an example – maybe with the A+ as well) before getting going with CCNA. You must have an understanding of the basics prior to starting your Cisco training or you’ll probably struggle. At interview time, companies will expect good networking skills to complement your CCNA.
Getting your Cisco CCNA is all you need at this stage – don’t be cajoled into attempting your CCNP for now. Once you’ve worked for a few years you can decide if this next level is for you. If so, you’ll be much more capable to succeed at that stage – because you’ll have so much more experience.
We can all agree: There’s absolutely no individual job security anymore; there can only be industry and business security – a company will remove anyone when it suits the company’s commercial requirements.
Where there are escalating skills deficits and increasing demand though, we generally discover a fresh type of security in the marketplace; where, fuelled by the constant growth conditions, businesses find it hard to locate the staff required.
The IT skills deficit across the UK falls in at roughly twenty six percent, according to the 2006 e-Skills analysis. It follows then that for each 4 job positions available across IT, employers can only source properly accredited workers for 3 of them.
This one idea on its own underpins why the UK needs a lot more new trainees to enter the Information Technology market.
It’s unlikely if a better time or market conditions could exist for getting certified in this swiftly increasing and budding industry.
It can be a nerve-racking task, but landing your first job can be relieved by training colleges, through a Job Placement Assistance service. At the end of the day it’s not as difficult as you may be led to believe to land a job – once you’re trained and certified; the growing UK skills shortage sees to that.
Having said that, it’s important to have help with your CV and interview techniques though; additionally, we would recommend everybody to get their CV updated as soon as they start a course – don’t put it off until you’ve qualified.
It’s not uncommon to find that junior support jobs have been offered to students who’re still on their course and have yet to take their exams. At least this will get your CV into the ‘possible’ pile and not the ‘no’ pile.
Actually, an independent and specialised local employment service (who will get paid by the employer when they’ve placed you) will perform better than any centralised training company’s service. It also stands to reason that they’ll be familiar with the local industry and employment needs.
To bottom line it, as long as you focus the same level of energy into finding your first IT position as into training, you won’t have any problems. Some students curiously spend hundreds of hours on their training and studies and do nothing more once they’ve got certified and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.
At the top of your shopping list for a training program should be proper direct-access 24×7 support with trained professional instructors and mentors. Far too often we see trainers who will only offer a basic 9am till 6pm support period (maybe later on certain days) with very little availability over the weekend.
Email support is too slow, and so-called telephone support is normally just routed to a call-centre which will just take down the issue and email it over to their technical team – who will call back over the next day or so (assuming you’re there), at a time suitable for them. This isn’t a lot of good if you’re stuck and can’t continue and only have a specific time you can study.
Be on the lookout for providers that use several support centres active in different time-zones. Each one should be integrated to give a single entry point as well as access round-the-clock, when it’s convenient for you, with no hassle.
Never make do with less than this. Support round-the-clock is the only viable option for technical learning. Perhaps you don’t intend to study during the evenings; often though, we’re out at work at the time when most support is available.
Considering the amount of options that are available, does it really shock us that most potential career changers get stuck choosing the job they will enjoy.
How likely is it for us to understand what is involved in a particular job when we haven’t done that before? Most likely we don’t even know anybody who does that actual job anyway.
To get to the bottom of this, a discussion is necessary, covering a variety of core topics:
* Which type of individual you are – which things you find interesting, plus of course – what don’t you like doing.
* Is it your desire to realise a closely held objective – for instance, working for yourself sometime soon?
* What priority do you place on salary vs the travel required?
* Learning what the main Information technology areas and markets are – and what makes them different.
* How much effort you’ll spend on your training.
In these situations, it’s obvious that the only real way to seek advice on these issues will be via a meeting with an advisor that has years of experience in computing (and more importantly the commercial requirements.)
(C) Jason Kendall. Pop to LearningLolly.com for superb advice. CCNA Certification Courses or CLICK HERE.