Get rid of the typical salesman who offers any particular course without an in-depth conversation to gain understanding of your current abilities and experience level. Always check they have access to a large choice of training products from which they could give you an appropriate solution. It's worth remembering, if you've had any relevant previous certification, then you can sometimes expect to begin at a different level to someone who is new to the field. It's wise to consider a user-skills course first. Starting there can make the slope up to the higher-levels a much easier going.

A major candidate for the biggest issue to be got round for IT students is usually having to turn up to 'In Centre' days or workshops. A lot of certification companies wax lyrical on the plus points of attending, however, they quickly become a thorn in your side due to many reasons:

- All that travelling - many trips and quite often hundreds of miles each time.

- Workshop access; normally weekdays only and sometimes 2-3 days at a time. It's never convenient to take the required leave of absence.

- Most of us discover 20 days holiday per year is barely enough. Use up over half of it for training events and see how much more difficult it makes things.

- Training events often become quickly full, leaving us with the '2nd best' solution.

- The pace of the class - workshops invariably have trainees of mixed aptitude, consequently tension can run high between the quicker-learners and those who prefer a more relaxed pace.

- The cost of travel - arranging transport to the training facility together with accommodation for the duration can start to get expensive each time you attend. Assuming just 5-10 workshops at about thirty-five pounds for a single over-night room, plus 40 pounds for petrol and 15 pounds for food, that becomes a minimum of four to nine hundred pounds of extra costs to cover.

- All of us want some privacy. We wouldn't want to run the risk of giving up any potential advancement that we're owed just because we're retraining.

- Surely, all of us at some time have avoided posing that question we were dying to ask, just because we wanted to maintain the illusion that we did, in fact, understand?

- For those who have work away from home, it's a fact of life that workshops now become impossible to get to - unfortunately however, the fees were paid along with everything else at the start.

Why don't you watch a video and be taught by teachers one-to-one in ready-made lessons, taking them at your convenience - not somebody else's. Imagine... Using a laptop you have the ability to learn wherever you want. And live 24 hr-a-day support is an online click away if you hit challenges. Modules and lessons can be repeated as often as you want - repetition aids memory. And you'll never have to write notes again - it's all laid on. Although this won't stop every problem, it undeniably makes things easier, simpler and less stressful. Plus you've got less costs, travel and hassle.

Sometimes students think that the state educational path is the way they should go. Why then are commercial certificates becoming more popular with employers? With 3 and 4 year academic degree costs becoming a tall order for many, together with the IT sector's increasing awareness that accreditation-based training is often far more commercially relevant, we've seen a great increase in Microsoft, CompTIA, CISCO and Adobe authorised training courses that create knowledgeable employees at a fraction of the cost and time involved. Typically, students are simply taught the necessary specifics in depth. It's not quite as straightforward as that, but the principle objective is to master the precisely demanded skill-sets (including a degree of required background) - without overdoing the detail in all sorts of other things (as degree courses are known to do).

Imagine if you were an employer - and you required somebody who had very specific skills. Which is the most straightforward: Go through a mass of different academic qualifications from graduate applicants, struggling to grasp what they've learned and which commercial skills they've mastered, or choose a specific set of accreditations that perfectly fit your needs, and then choose your interviewees based around that. The interview is then more about the person and how they'll fit in - instead of long discussions on technical suitability.

An all too common mistake that potential students often succumb to is to look for the actual course to take, instead of focusing on the end result they want to achieve. Colleges are brimming over with students who chose a course based on what sounded good - rather than what would get them an enjoyable career or job. Never let yourself become one of those unfortunate students that choose a course which looks like it could be fun - and get to the final hurdle of an accreditation for a job they hate.

You'll want to understand the exact expectations industry will have. What particular exams they'll want you to gain and in what way you can gain some industry experience. You should also spend a little time setting guidelines as to how far you'd like to get as it will often force you to choose a particular set of exams. Always seek guidance and advice from an industry professional, irrespective of whether you have to pay - it's much safer and cheaper to find out at the beginning whether you've chosen correctly, rather than find out following two years of study that you're doing entirely the wrong thing and have to start from the beginning again.

Beginning from the idea that it's necessary to find the job we want to do first and foremost, before we're even able to ponder which career development program meets that requirement, how do we decide on the way that suits us? Because with no solid background in computing, how can most of us be expected to know what a particular job actually consists of? Consideration of these different factors is essential if you need to uncover the right answer for you:

- Which type of individual you consider yourself to be - the tasks that you get enjoyment from, and conversely - what you definitely don't enjoy.

- Why it seems right moving into IT - it could be you're looking to triumph over some personal goal like self-employment for instance.

- The income requirements you have?

- Getting to grips with what the normal work roles and markets are - plus how they're different to each other.

- How much effort you'll spend on getting qualified.

For most people, sifting through so much data requires a good chat with an advisor that can investigate each area with you. And we don't just mean the qualifications - but also the commercial needs and expectations of the market as well.

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