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.

When considering retraining, it’s vital to first define your requirements from the position you’d like to train for. You need to know that things would be a lot better before much time and effort is spent re-directing your life. It’s good sense to regard the big picture first, to make an informed decision:

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

* Do you have a preference which market sector you would be suited to? (In this economy, it’s essential to choose well.)

* 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?

* Do you expect your new knowledge base to give you the chance to get a good job, and keep working until sixty five?

We would advise you to consider the computer industry – there are a larger number of roles than staff to fill them, plus it’s one of the few choices of career where the market sector is still growing. In contrast to the opinions of certain people, it isn’t just geeks looking at screens every day (some jobs are like that of course.) The vast majority of roles are occupied by ordinary men and women who enjoy better than average salaries.

A useful feature provided by many trainers is job placement assistance. This is to assist your search for your first position. With the growing demand for appropriately skilled people in this country right now, there’s no need to become overly impressed with this service however. It’s not as difficult as you may be led to believe to get a job as long as you’ve got the necessary skills and qualifications.

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.

To bottom line it, as long as you focus the same level of energy into securing your first IT position as into studying, you’re not going to hit many challenges. A number of students strangely spend hundreds of hours on their training and studies and then just stop once qualified and would appear to think that businesses will just discover them.

Of course: a training course or a qualification isn’t what this is about; the career you’re training for is. Far too many training organisations completely prioritise the piece of paper.

Don’t let yourself become one of the unfortunate masses who select a program that seems ‘fun’ or ‘interesting’ – and end up with a plaque on the wall for a career they’ll never really get any satisfaction from.

Never let your focus stray from what you want to achieve, and build your study action-plan from that – avoid getting them back-to-front. Keep your eyes on your goals and study for something you’ll enjoy for years to come.

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.

Looking at the myriad of choice out there, does it really shock us that the majority of trainees get stuck choosing the job they could be successful with.

How can we possibly grasp the tasks faced daily in an IT career if we’ve never been there? Often we have never met anyone who performs the role either.

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

* The sort of individual you reckon you are – what kind of jobs you find interesting, plus of course – what makes you unhappy.

* Are you aiming to achieve a closely held dream – like working for yourself someday?

* What salary and timescale requirements you may have?

* Often, trainees don’t consider the work involved to gain all the necessary accreditation.

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

In all honesty, it’s obvious that the only real way to research these issues will be via a meeting with someone that understands Information Technology (as well as it’s commercial needs and requirements.)

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. Pop over to LearningLolly.com for clear career tips on Computer Forsensics Training and The Internet Is 40.