Finding your first job in the industry can be a little easier with the help of a Job Placement Assistance program. Sometimes, there is more emphasis than is necessary on this service, for it's really not that difficult for a well trained and motivated person to land a job in the IT industry - as employers are keen to find appropriately trained staff.

Help with your CV and interview techniques might be provided (if not, see one of our sites for help). Make sure you bring your CV right up to date immediately - not when you're ready to start work! You may not have got to the stage where you've passed your first exam when you will be offered your first junior support role; although this is not possible unless you've posted your CV on job sites. The best services to get you a new position are most often local IT focused employment agencies. Because they make their money when they've found you a job, they have more incentive to get on with it.

A good number of trainees, so it seems, spend evenings and weekends on their training and studies (sometimes for years), and just give up when it comes to finding their first job. Introduce yourself... Work hard to let employers know about you. A job isn't just going to bump into you.

It's essential to have an accredited exam preparation programme included in the package you choose. Make sure that the simulated exams are not only asking questions on the right subjects, but ask them in the way that the actual final exam will phrase them. This completely unsettles students if they're faced with unrecognisable phrases and formats. It's a good idea to ask for testing modules so you can verify your knowledge whenever you need to. Practice or 'mock' exams help to build your confidence - so you're much more at ease with the real thing.

It makes sense if you're just starting out get going on your career path with a training course in software support. This will equip you with some lower-level qualifications, to help you get your first foot on the ladder, plus offer you an understanding of a different useful area of the industry. The ideal program for the beginner is the MCDST (Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician). An entire package of 'MCDST', 'MCTS' and 'MCITP' can be expected to be accomplished in about five-hundred hours of part time study, and so its feasible for one year's part-time study. However, of course, we encourage caution before making any kind of decisions in isolation. Get advice from an IT specialist to reassure yourself that you are getting into the correct program to suit you, both in terms of learning style & career choice. If you really don't focus closely on where you would like to finish up, you might find that you're way off course & many hundreds of pounds worse-off!

An area that's often missed by those weighing up a particular programme is the issue of 'training segmentation'. This basically means the method used to break up the program for delivery to you, which can make a dramatic difference to how you end up. Normally, you'll enrol on a course that takes between and 1 and 3 years and get posted one section at a time - from one exam to the next. It seems to make sense on one level, but consider these issues: What if for some reason you don't get to the end of every single exam? And what if the order provided doesn't meet your requirements? Through no fault of your own, you might take a little longer and not get all the study materials as a result.

In a perfect world, you want everything at the start - meaning you'll have all of them to come back to at any time in the future - whenever it suits you. Variations can then be made to the order that you attack each section if you find another route more intuitive.

It's important to understand: a training program or the accreditation isn't the end-goal; the career that you're getting the training for is. Far too many training organisations completely prioritise just the training course. It's a sad testimony to the sales skills of many companies, but the majority of trainees kick-off study that often sounds spectacular in the prospectus, but which gets us a career that is of no interest. Talk to many college graduates for a real eye-opener.

It's a good idea to understand the exact expectations industry will have. Which particular accreditations you'll be required to have and how you'll go about getting some commercial experience. It's also worth spending time thinking about how far you reckon you're going to want to progress your career as often it can affect your choice of qualifications. Long before starting a training course, it's good advice to discuss the specific market needs with a professional advisor, to ensure the training program covers all that is required.

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