Ask a skilled consultant and they'll regale you with many horror stories of students who've been conned by dodgy salespeople. Make sure you deal with someone who asks some in-depth questions to find out what's right for you - not for their paycheque! Dig until you find the right starting point of study for you. Sometimes, the training inception point for someone with experience is often massively dissimilar to the student with none. Working through a user skills module first will sometimes be the most effective way to start into your computer training, but really depends on your level of familiarity with computers.

Qualifications from the commercial sector are now, very visibly, beginning to replace the older academic routes into IT - why then is this the case? The IT sector now acknowledges that for mastery of skill sets for commercial use, proper accreditation from such organisations as Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA often is more effective in the commercial field - and a fraction of the cost and time. Patently, a necessary quantity of closely linked knowledge has to be covered, but essential specialised knowledge in the areas needed gives a vendor educated student a distinct advantage.

Just like the advert used to say: 'It does what it says on the tin'. Companies need only to know what they need doing, and then request applicants with the correct exam numbers. Then they're assured that a potential employee can do exactly what's required.

The one thing you have to grasp is absolutely no training-course can actually make a web designer out of you. The actual training course will simply cover all the techniques & skills. As you work on your training-course, make the effort to put together & develop a broad range of your own web-sites to build a collection of your work. Make websites about a special interest, your family, a favourite music group or even TV programme. You could even set up interactive web sites & get traffic on them. All this will look more constructive on your CV, and in your portfolio, than a certificate from 'Adobe' will!

The old fashioned style of teaching, utilising reference manuals and books, can be pretty hard going sometimes. If all this is ringing some familiar bells, dig around for more practical courses which feature interactive and multimedia modules. Where we can get all of our senses involved in our learning, then we often see hugely increased memory retention as a result.

Interactive audio-visual materials with demonstrations and practice sessions will forever turn you away from traditional book study. And you'll find them fun and interesting. Don't take any chances and look at a small selection of training examples before you sign the purchase order. You should expect instructor-led video demonstrations and interactive audio-visual sections with practice modules.

It is generally unwise to select online only courseware. Because of the variable quality and reliability of the ISP (internet service provider) market, it makes sense to have CD or DVD ROM based materials.

IT User Skills Career PC Interactive Certification Courses >>