Of Worlds

All of us are short of time, and generally should we have cause to improve our career prospects, studying in addition to a 40 hour week is what we’re faced with. Microsoft authorised training can be the way to do it.

It’s a good idea to look for a person who’s got industry experience, who could help you sort out which area of the industry would be right for you, and what sort of tasks are suitable for an individual with your abilities and personal preferences.

After settling on your career path, your next search is for a suitable training program personalised to be right for your current level of knowledge and ability. The quality of training should more than match your expectations.

Getting your first commercial position can feel more straightforward with the help of a Job Placement Assistance facility. The honest truth is that it isn’t a complex operation to secure a job - as long as you’re correctly trained and certified; employers in this country need your skills.

Get your CV updated straight-away though - you should get plenty of help from your training provider on this. Don’t procrastinate and leave it till you’ve finished your exams.

It’s not uncommon to find that junior support jobs are offered to trainees who are still learning and have yet to take their exams. At the very least this will get your CV into the ‘possible’ pile and not the ‘no’ pile.

The top companies to get you a new position are normally specialist locally based employment services. Because they only get paid when they place you, they have the necessary incentive to try that bit harder.

In a nutshell, as long as you put the same commitment into securing a job as into studying, you won’t find it too challenging. Some people curiously put hundreds of hours into their training and studies and do nothing more once they’ve passed their exams and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.

Authorised exam simulation and preparation software is essential - and should definitely be supplied by your course provider.

Sometimes people can be thrown off course by practising exam questions that don’t come from authorised sources. Quite often, the question formats and phraseology can be quite different and you need to be ready for this.

As you can imagine, it is vital to ensure that you’re absolutely ready for your commercial exam before embarking on it. Rehearsing ‘mock’ exams logs the information in your brain and helps to avoid failed exams.

Commencing from the idea that we need to choose the market that sounds most inviting first, before we’re even able to weigh up what training course fulfils our needs, how do we know the right path?

I mean, if you don’t have any understanding of IT in the workplace, what chance is there for you to know what some particular IT person actually does day-to-day? How can you possibly choose what certification program is the most likely for you to get there.

To get to the bottom of this, a discussion is necessary, covering several different aspects:

* The type of personality you have and interests - which working tasks you like and dislike.

* Why it seems right getting involved with the IT industry - maybe you’d like to achieve a life-long goal like being your own boss for instance.

* What scale of importance is the salary - is it very important, or does job satisfaction rate a lot higher on your priority-list?

* With many, many markets to choose from in computing - it’s wise to get a solid grounding on what sets them apart.

* How much time you’re prepared to put into obtaining your certification.

The best way to avoid the barrage of jargon, and uncover the best path to success, have an informal meeting with an industry-experienced advisor; a person who understands the commercial reality as well as all the qualifications.

The age-old way of teaching, with books and manuals, is usually pretty hard going. If you’re nodding as you read this, dig around for more practical courses which have a majority of interactive, multimedia parts.

Recent studies into the way we learn shows that much more of what we learn in remembered when we receive multi-sensorial input, and we get practically involved in what we’re studying.

Study programs now come via DVD-ROM discs, so everything is learned directly from your own PC. Video streaming means you are able to see your instructors showing you how something is done, and then practice yourself - in an interactive lab.

Don’t take any chances and look at examples of the courseware provided before you sign on the dotted line. What you want are video tutorials, instructor demo’s and interactive audio-visual sections with practice modules.

Some companies only have access to purely on-line training; and while this is acceptable much of the time, think what will happen when you don’t have access to the internet or you get intermittent problems and speed issues. It’s much safer to rely on CD and DVD ROM materials that don’t suffer from these broadband issues.

Written by Scott Edwards. Pop over to Web Design Certification or www.CareerChangeIdea.co.uk/lcca.html.

The fact is that a career within the electrical sphere is a frequent alternative for many people. For simplicity’s sake we will use the phrase Electrical Industry to cover off the more accurate term of “Electro-Mechanical Engineering”. Also, for ease we will concentrate on those principles that sit within the domestic and commercial markets for the UK. By starting on the main subjects and checking the ‘add-ons’ later on we can review the centre of the electrical industry.

Basically there are two clear ways to gain admission into the electrical market. The primary route is the apprenticeship which is considered the more traditional and then we have the second phase for those who are joining at a later stage. To clarify, we’ll label each of them as the ‘Mature Entrants’ and the ‘Junior Entrants’.

Mature Entrants who join the industry later on do so with the aim of working for themselves, usually as a one person business. Whereas the ‘Junior Entrants’ train alongside regular electrical employment to pick up practical work place skills as they gain their qualifications. To be fair, young apprentices leaving school will have a lot of supplementary skills to learn during their early years as a working adult.

The two different ways into the industry have two separate methods of preparation. Junior entrants go through NVQ training in England and Wales, and SVQ training in Scotland. Whilst the core syllabus is relatively similar to non-NVQ commercial training, there is a particular requirement to attain the actual NVQ qualifications as part of the overall training program. This means that work programs or apprenticeships have to be sought in order to arrange the necessary course work and testing phases of work.

By opting to work on a freelance basis, many Mature Entrants appear to focus on those areas that provide profitable and practical solutions other than NVQ’s. In the main the person will aim to gain the best from their investment costs against the return for that training. Whilst this may seem to reduce the overall qualification set, this meets the trade requirements for the areas involved, and thus provides a quicker and more direct commercial route to the market.

With regard to regular earning potential we have two clear paths - one for employees and the other for the self-employed. The question remains as to how much work per week a self-employed person puts in - for the sake of this review we assume that it is full time. Salary options are often affected both by the know- how and the knack for doing things as well as any perceived formal levels of understanding.

The basic salary for Junior Entrants tends to start around the 12-15k mark, but rises regularly to around 30k with the right level of experience. That said, due to the UK press telling people that electricians can get salaries in excess of 70k p.a., it is more difficult to gauge incomes for ‘Mature Entrants’. It should be remembered however that a self employed person must often bear additional costs for items such as vehicles, tools and clothing. Furthermore, professional items such as accountancy, tax and insurance need to be considered to make the business work properly. That aside, whilst the work is open to market-forces to some degree, the current skills shortage in the UK means that there’s a high work-load available. If a student wanted to work every day of the week this would be possible in some areas. It should be understood that the 70-100k figures that we see thrown around in newspapers are not easily achieved, and would either require working long hours or having assistants (or both.)

It should be noted that the working week for most electricians differs between the Junior and Mature Entrant markets. Electricians who are ‘Junior Entrants’ would work a simple 40 hour working week. The Mature market is however often reliant as to when their client base is available, especially in the domestic sector. There are however lots of opportunities for self-employed electricians to do work on small business systems during normal office hours.

A Junior Entrant that has chosen to adopt a career within the electrical trade is more than likely to gain follow up expertise within the particular field they fall into, often dictated by the main business activities of their employer. Then again, the mature entrant can even go outside of the electrical field to gas work or plumbing work for example. Certainly if they are employed within the domestic sector this makes it easier to take on work without having to rely upon other people.

‘Green Engineering’ is another area to consider. This requires new skills and working knowledge and is one of the fastest growing areas today. Looking together to the UK and the EEC this activity could be of benefit to both Junior and Mature Entrants, providing new growth and opportunities to both disciplines.

(C) 2009 - S. Edwards. Hop over to Part P Courses or Electrical Qualifications.