Were it not for a constant influx of trained PC and network support staff, business in Great Britain (and around the world) would surely be brought to its knees. Consequently, there’s an on-going demand for men and women with technical ability to support both the users themselves and their networks. Our country’s need for increasing numbers of qualified personnel is growing, as we become consistently more dependent upon PC’s in the twenty first century.

Consider only learning programmes which will lead to commercially approved exams. There’s an endless list of small colleges pushing minor ‘in-house’ certificates that are essentially useless when it comes to finding a job.

Unless your qualification is issued by a big-hitter like Microsoft, CompTIA, Adobe or Cisco, then you’ll probably find it will have been a waste of time – as it’ll be an unknown commodity.

A fatal Faux-Pas that many potential students make is to look for the actual course to take, instead of focusing on where they want to get to. Colleges have thousands of direction-less students that chose a program because it looked interesting – instead of the program that would surely get them the career they desired.

Imagine training for just one year and then end up doing a job for a lifetime. Don’t make the error of opting for what may seem to be an ‘interesting’ course only to spend 20 years doing something you don’t even enjoy!

Set targets for what you want to earn and whether you’re an ambitious person or not. This will influence which certifications will be expected and what you can expect to give industry in return.

You’d also need help from a professional that can best explain the industry you’re considering, and will be able to provide ‘A typical day in the life of’ synopsis for that career-path. This is incredibly important because you need to know if you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Don’t accept anything less than the current Microsoft (or Cisco, CompTIA etc.) authorised exam preparation and simulation materials.

Often students can be thrown off course by going through practice questions that don’t come from official boards. Often, the phraseology can be completely unlike un-authorised versions and you need to be ready for this.

Ensure that you ask for exam preparation tools so you’ll be able to test your comprehension at all times. Practice or ‘mock’ exams log the information in your brain – then the real thing isn’t quite as scary.

One crafty way that course providers make extra profits is by adding exam fees upfront to the cost of a course and offering an exam guarantee. It looks like a good deal, until you think it through:

Everybody’s aware that they’re still paying for it – it’s not so hard to see that it’s already been included in the overall price charged by the course provider. It’s absolutely not free (it’s just marketing companies think we’ll fall for anything they say!)

If you want to pass first time, then you should pay for each exam as you go, focus on it intently and apply yourself as required.

Don’t pay up-front, but seek out the best deal for you at the time, and hang on to your cash. You’ll then be able to select where you take your exam – so you can choose somewhere closer to home.

A lot of unscrupulous training colleges net huge profits through charging for all the exam fees up-front and hoping that you won’t take them all.

It’s worth noting that exam re-takes via companies who offer an ‘Exam Guarantee’ are monitored with tight restrictions. They will insist that you take pre-tests first till you’ve proven conclusively that you can pass.

With average Prometric and VUE exams coming in at around 112 pounds in the UK, it’s common sense to fund them one by one. There’s no sense in throwing away maybe a thousand pounds extra at the start of your studies. Study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is what will really guarantee success.