Getting your first commercial position can be a little easier with the help of a Job Placement Assistance facility. However sometimes there is more emphasis than is necessary on this service, because it is genuinely quite straightforward for a well trained and motivated person to secure a job in this industry - because there's a great need for trained staff.

CV and Interview advice and support should be offered (if it isn't, consult one of our sites). Ensure you polish up your CV straight away - don't leave it till you pass the exams! Getting onto the 'maybe' pile of CV's is far better than not even being known about. A surprising amount of junior support jobs are given to people (sometimes when they've only just got going.) The most efficient companies to get you a new position are generally local IT focused employment agencies. Because they get paid commission to place you, they have the necessary incentive to try that bit harder.

Please make sure you don't invest a great deal of time on your training course, then call a halt and leave it up to everyone else to sort out your employment. Stop procrastinating and make your own enquiries. Put the same time and energy into finding a good job as it took to get qualified.

The issue of exactly how to imitate a 'Cisco' environment to prepare for examinations is frequently overlooked. When you're rehearsing for a Microsoft examination, you're able to put together some old PC's and have an actual network to learn with. This simply isn't feasible in a Cisco environment, since you'd need enterprise-class routers and hardware, to say nothing of a large cluster of PC's and various other highly expensive technologies. Cisco approved visualisers and network simulation-programs are really the one and only practical option. Such state-of-the-art software systems allow students to make sizable 'networks' in a 'virtual environment' , using on-screen facilities to select particular hard-ware models and practise 'interrogation' of data movement. These are excellent pieces of software, & no home study or self learning 'CCNA' program should be without one. The very well respected RouterSim's CCNA Network-Visualiser is without doubt among the best we've tried, & we incorporate it in all of our 'CCNA' training courses.

In amongst the top nominees for the biggest issue to be got round in the IT training sector can be attending multi-day workshops. Many training schools wax lyrical on the positive points of taking part in these events, usually though, they end up as a major problem because of:

- A lot of journeys to the workshops - sometimes 100's of miles.

- Workshop availability; frequently weekdays only and sometimes two to three days together. It's not easy to get the days away from work.

- Lost annual leave - the majority of trainees only have 20 days holiday. If over half of it is swallowed up by training workshops, you haven't got a great deal of holiday time remaining for the family as a whole.

- 'In-Centre' workshop days can 'sell out' fast and can be very crammed in.

- Tension can be created in classes because the right pace for one student is not the same as another.

- Many trainees speak about the high (and unexpected) costs associated with getting transport to and from the training venue while covering the cost of accommodation and food can get very high.

- Don't risk the possibility of getting side-stepped for advancement or pay-rises because of your studies.

- It's very common for trainees to hide the fact that they want to raise a question - simply because they're with their peers.

- For those of us who need to occasionally work or live away part of the time, imagine the trouble involved in travelling to the required workshops, as time is now more scarce than ever.

It obviously makes much more sense to be trained when it suits you -- not the training company - and exploit instructor-led videos with interactive lab's. Whenever you experience difficulties, utilise the 24x7 Support (that we hope you'll insist on with any technical courses.) You should remember, if you have a laptop, study can take place anywhere. No matter how often you feel you need to repeat something, video tutors aren't ever likely to rush you! And remember, because of this, you'll never have to write notes again. Everything's laid out there for quick access. Basically: You save time, hassle, money and completely avoid polluting the environment.

It's important to understand: a training program or an accreditation isn't what this is about; the particular job that you want is. Many trainers unfortunately put too much weight in the piece of paper. It's possible, for instance, to obtain tremendous satisfaction from a year of studying and then find yourself trapped for decades in something completely unrewarding, as an upshot of not doing some decent due-diligence at the outset.

Stay focused on what you want to achieve, and create a learning-plan from that - avoid getting them back-to-front. Keep on track and study for a job that will keep you happy for many years. Prior to embarking on a particular training course, it's good advice to talk through specific career needs with an industry professional, to ensure the training program covers all that is required.

It's usual for students to get confused with one aspect of their training usually not even thought about: The breakdown of the course materials before being packaged off through the post. Often, you'll join a programme staged over 2 or 3 years and receive one element at a time until graduation. This sounds logical on one level, until you consider this: What would happen if you didn't finish every module at the required speed? And maybe you'll find their order of completion doesn't work as well as some other order of studying might.

In all honesty, the very best answer is to obtain their recommendation on the best possible order of study, but make sure you have all of your learning modules right from the beginning. Everything is then in your possession should you not complete it inside of their required time-scales.

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