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Well done! Hitting upon this feature suggests you’re thinking about your future, and if it’s re-training you’re considering you’ve already done more than almost everybody else. Did you know that hardly any of us describe ourselves as contented at work – but most will just put up with it. We encourage you to be different and move forward – you have the rest of your life to enjoy it.

Before you make decisions on any career courses, discuss your thoughts with an industry expert who can help you sort out which area will be right for you. Someone who can get to know your personality, and find out what types of work suit you:

* Do you like working on your own or is being in a team environment an important option?

* What do you require from the market sector you work in? (Things do change – look at the building trade, or banks for example.)

* Is this the last time you imagine you’ll re-train, and if so, do you suppose your new career will allow you to do that?

* Would you like your study to be in an industry where you believe your chances of gainful employment are high until retirement?

Prioritise Information Technology, that’s our best advice – unusually, it’s one of the growing market sectors in this country and overseas. Salaries are also more generous than most.

The perhaps intimidating chore of securing your first job is often made easier by training colleges, through a Job Placement Assistance service. Often, too much is made of this feature, as it’s relatively easy for well qualified and focused men and women to get a job in this industry – because there’s a great need for skilled employees.

Having said that, it’s important to have help and assistance with preparing a CV and getting interviews though; also we would encourage any student to get their CV updated right at the beginning of their training – don’t put it off till you’ve finished your exams.

It’s not uncommon to find that junior support roles are offered to people who are in the process of training and haven’t even passed a single exam yet. This will at least get you into the ‘maybe’ pile of CV’s – rather than the ‘No’ pile.

If you don’t want to travel too far to work, then you’ll often find that a local (but specialised) recruitment consultancy may serve you better than the trainer’s recruitment division, for they’re going to be familiar with local employment needs.

Not inconsiderable numbers of men and women, apparently, put a great deal of effort into their studies (sometimes for years), and then just stop instead of trying to get the right position. Market yourself… Do your best to put yourself out there. A job isn’t just going to bump into you.

Don’t get hung-up, as many people do, on the certification itself. Training is not an end in itself; you should be geared towards the actual job at the end of it. You need to remain focused on where you want to go.

It’s common, in some situations, to thoroughly enjoy one year of training and then spend 20 miserable years in a job you hate, as a consequence of not performing the correct research when you should’ve – at the outset.

Spend some time thinking about earning potential and what level of ambition fits you. This will influence what precise certifications will be expected and how much effort you’ll have to give in return.

Take guidance from an experienced professional, even if you have to pay – it’s usually much cheaper and safer to find out at the start if you’ve chosen correctly, instead of discovering following two years of study that you aren’t going to enjoy the job you’ve chosen and now need to go back to square one.

In most cases, your normal person has no idea in what direction to head in a computing career, let alone which market they should be considering getting trained in.

As having no previous experience in the IT industry, in what way could we understand what someone in a particular job does?

Generally, the way to deal with this question appropriately flows from a deep discussion of a number of areas:

* Personality plays an important role – what things get your juices flowing, and what are the areas that really turn you off.

* Why you’re looking at starting in Information Technology – it could be you’re looking to overcome a particular goal such as working for yourself maybe.

* What salary and timescale requirements you may have?

* Considering the huge variation that Information Technology encapsulates, it’s a requirement that you can take in how they differ.

* The time and energy you’ll commit your training.

The best way to avoid the industry jargon, and discover what’ll really work for you, have an informal meeting with an advisor with years of experience; someone who understands the commercial reality whilst covering all the qualifications.

You have to be sure that all your exams are current and what employers are looking for – you’re wasting your time with programmes which provide certificates that are worthless because they’re ‘in-house’.

Unless your qualification is issued by a company like Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe, then it’s likely it will be commercially useless – because it won’t give an employer any directly-useable skills.

(C) 2009. Look at LearningLolly.com for smart career tips on Computer Forsensics Training and The Internet Is 40.