Four separate areas of study make up a full CompTIA A+; you’re qualified as an A+ achiever once you’ve passed your exams for 2 out of 4 subjects. For this reason, most training providers only teach 2 specialised areas. In reality it’s necessary to have the teaching in all areas as many jobs will demand an understanding of the whole A+ program. It’s not essential to pass exams in all of them, but it seems common sense that you at least have a working knowledge of every area.
When you embark on the CompTIA A+, you’ll be taught how to work in antistatic conditions and build and fix computers. Diagnostic techniques and fault finding are also on the syllabus, as is remote access.
You might also choose to consider adding Network+ training to your A+ as you’ll then be in a position to take care of computer networks, which means greater employment benefits.
One crafty way that training providers make a lot more is by charging for exams up-front and offering an exam guarantee. This sounds impressive, but is it really:
You’ll be charged for it ultimately. It’s definitely not free – they’ve simply charged more for the whole training package.
Trainees who take exams one at a time, funding them as they go are much more likely to pass. They are mindful of what they’ve paid and so are more inclined to make sure they’re ready.
Why should you pay your college at the start of the course for exams? Find the best exam deal or offer when you’re ready, instead of paying a premium – and do it locally – rather than possibly hours away from your area.
A great deal of money is netted by a significant number of organisations that get money upfront for exam fees. For quite legitimate reasons, a number of students don’t get to do their exams and so they pocket the rest. Surprising as it sounds, providers exist that actually bank on it – as that’s how they make a lot of their profit.
Also, ‘Exam Guarantees’ often aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The majority of organisations will not pay for re-takes until you’re able to demonstrate an excellent mock pass rate.
Exam fees averaged 112 pounds or thereabouts last year through local VUE or Pro-metric centres throughout the country. Therefore, why splash out often many hundreds of pounds extra to have ‘an Exam Guarantee’, when it’s no secret that the best guarantee is a commitment to studying and the use of authorised exam preparation tools.
We’d all like to believe that our jobs will remain secure and our future is protected, but the growing reality for the majority of jobs around the UK today appears to be that security may be a thing of the past.
We can however locate security at market-level, by probing for areas in high demand, together with work-skill shortages.
Taking the computing business for instance, a recent e-Skills analysis demonstrated massive skills shortages throughout Great Britain around the 26 percent mark. To explain it in a different way, this reveals that the United Kingdom can only find three qualified staff for each 4 positions existing currently.
Well taught and commercially certified new professionals are therefore at a total premium, and it looks like they will be for many years to come.
In actuality, acquiring professional IT skills throughout the years to come is most likely the safest career move you’ll ever make.
Qualifications from the commercial sector are now, most definitely, beginning to replace the traditional routes into the industry – but why is this?
With an ever-increasing technical demand on resources, the IT sector has had to move to the specialised core-skills learning that the vendors themselves supply – for example companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA. This usually turns out to involve less time and financial outlay.
In essence, only that which is required is learned. It’s not quite as straightforward as that, but the principle objective is to concentrate on the fundamentally important skill-sets (with some necessary background) – without trying to cram in every other area (as degree courses are known to do).
Imagine if you were an employer – and your company needed a person with some very particular skills. Which is the most straightforward: Go through loads of academic qualifications from hopeful applicants, struggling to grasp what they’ve learned and which commercial skills have been attained, or select a specialised number of commercial certifications that precisely match your needs, and make your short-list from that. You can then focus on how someone will fit into the team at interview – rather than on the depth of their technical knowledge.
Of course: a training itself or a qualification isn’t the end-goal; the particular job that you want to end up in is. Too many training companies place too much importance on the qualification itself.
It’s a sad fact, but thousands of new students start out on programs that sound great from the sales literature, but which provides a job that doesn’t satisfy. Try talking to typical university students to see what we mean.
Set targets for earning potential and the level of your ambition. Often, this changes which certifications will be expected and what you can expect to give industry in return.
Seek guidance and advice from an experienced professional, even if there’s a fee involved – it’s usually much cheaper and safer to discover early on whether something is going to suit and interest you, instead of discovering following two years of study that you aren’t going to enjoy the job you’ve chosen and have to return to the start of another program.
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