The CompTIA A+ training program covers four areas of training; you’re seen as competent at A+ when you’ve gained exams for just two specialist areas. Because of this, the majority of training establishments offer only two of the training courses. You’ll find that to carry out a job effectively, you’ll need the teaching in all areas as industry will demand the skills and knowledge of the whole A+ program. Don’t feel pressured to pass exams in all of them, although it would seem prudent that you take tutorials in all 4 subjects.
Alongside being taught how to build and fix computers, trainees involved in this training will learn how to operate in antistatic conditions, how to fault find, to diagnose and to remotely access problems.
It could be a good idea to consider adding Network+ training to your A+ as you’ll then be in a position to work with networks, and become a more senior IT professional.
Students who consider this area of study are usually quite practically-minded, and don’t really enjoy classrooms, and struggling through thick study-volumes. If you identify with this, use multimedia, interactive learning, where everything is presented via full motion video.
Research has always verified that an ‘involved’ approach to study, where we utilise all our senses, is much more conducive to long-term memory.
Courses are now available in the form of CD and DVD ROM’s, so everything is learned directly from your own PC. Using video-streaming, you can sit back and watch the teachers showing you precisely how to perform the required skill, followed by your chance to practice – in a virtual lab environment.
Be sure to get a demonstration of the study materials from your training provider. The package should contain slide-shows, instructor-led videos and interactive labs where you get to practice.
Many companies provide online training only; while you can get away with this much of the time, think what will happen when you don’t have access to the internet or you get slow speeds and down-time etc. A safer solution is the provision of DVD or CD discs which will not have these problems.
Exam ‘guarantees’ are sometimes offered as part of a training package – this always means exams have to be paid for upfront, at the start of your training. Before you get carried away with a course with such a promise, why not think about this:
You’ll pay for it somehow. It’s definitely not free – it’s simply been shoe-horned into the price as a whole.
Those who go in for their examinations when it’s appropriate, paying as they go are much better placed to get through first time. They’re conscious of what they’ve paid and so are more inclined to be up to the task.
Take your exams as locally as possible and look for the very best offer you can at the time.
Including money in your training package for exams (and interest charges if you’re borrowing money) is a false economy. Resist being talked into filling the training company’s account with your hard-earned cash just to give them more interest! A lot bank on the fact that you won’t get to do them all – so they get to keep the extra funds.
Also, ‘Exam Guarantees’ often aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Most companies won’t pay for you to re-take until you have demonstrated conclusively that you won’t fail again.
Shelling out hundreds or thousands of pounds on ‘Exam Guarantees’ is naive – when study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is actually the key to your success.
Qualifications from the commercial sector are now, undoubtedly, beginning to replace the traditional routes into the industry – so why has this come about?
With an ever-increasing technical demand on resources, the IT sector has moved to the specialised core-skills learning that can only be obtained from the actual vendors – that is companies like CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA. This often comes in at a fraction of the cost and time.
Higher education courses, for instance, clog up the training with a lot of background study – and a syllabus that’s too generalised. This prevents a student from getting enough specific knowledge about the core essentials.
If an employer understands what they’re looking for, then all they have to do is advertise for the exact skill-set required to meet that need. Commercial syllabuses are set to meet an exact requirement and do not vary between trainers (in the way that degree courses can).
Frequently, a everyday student doesn’t know how they should get into a computing career, let alone what sector is worth considering for retraining.
Flicking through lists of IT career possibilities is next to useless. Most of us don’t even know what the neighbours do for a living – let alone understand the intricacies of a new IT role.
To work through this, we need to discuss a number of core topics:
* Your hobbies and interests – these often define what things will satisfy you.
* Do you hope to accomplish a closely held aim – like becoming self-employed in the near future?
* Where do you stand on job satisfaction vs salary?
* Considering all that IT covers, you’ll need to be able to see what’s different.
* Having a good look at how much time and effort you’ll make available.
For the average person, dissecting so much data requires a good chat with an advisor who knows what they’re talking about. And we’re not only talking about the qualifications – but also the commercial needs and expectations of industry too.
(C) S. Edwards 2010. Try MCSE Courses or www.MidLifeCareerChange.co.uk/AMLCC.html.
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