Sep

Cisco Careers Training In Detail

Written by Jason Kendall Published in: Journal, Technology PDF

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by JasonKendall

If it's Cisco training you're after, but you haven't worked with network switches or routers, you should first attempt the Cisco CCNA qualification. This will provide you with knowledge and skills to work with routers. The world wide web is built up of many routers, and national or international corporations with multiple departments and sites also need routers to connect their computer networks.

Jobs that use this type of knowledge mean the chances are you'll work for large companies that are spread out geographically but need to keep in touch. Or, you may move on to joining an internet service provider. Both types of jobs command good salaries.

Having the right skills and knowledge ahead of starting your Cisco CCNA course skills is crucial. Therefore, it's probably necessary to speak to an advisor who can tell you what else you need to know.

In most cases, your everyday student really has no clue how they should get into a computing career, or what sector to focus their retraining program on.

What chances do most of us have of understanding what is involved in a particular job when we haven't done that before? We normally haven't met someone who works in that sector anyway.

The key to answering this question properly flows from a thorough conversation around several different topics:

* Your personal interests and hobbies - as they can define what areas will satisfy you.

* Is your focus to get qualified due to a precise reason - for instance, do you aim to work at home (working for yourself?)?

* What scale of importance is the salary - is it the most important thing, or is day-to-day enjoyment higher up on your list of priorities?

* Getting to grips with what typical career roles and markets are - and what makes them different.

* Having a proper look into the effort, commitment and time that you can put aside.

For most of us, sifting through all these ideas needs a long talk with someone that has direct industry experience. And we don't just mean the accreditations - but also the commercial requirements besides.

Accredited exam simulation and preparation packages are a must - and should definitely be offered by your training provider.

Students regularly can be thrown off course by going through practice questions that don't come from official boards. It's not uncommon that the way questions are phrased can be quite different and you should be prepared for this.

Ensure that you have some simulated exam questions in order to verify your knowledge whenever you need to. Practice or 'mock' exams will help to boost your attitude - so you won't be quite so nervous at the actual exam.

Locating job security in this economic down-turn is very rare. Businesses can throw us from the workplace at a moment's notice - whenever it suits.

It's possible though to hit upon market-level security, by searching for areas that have high demand, mixed with work-skill shortages.

With the IT market for example, the most recent e-Skills study demonstrated a national skills shortage across the UK of around 26 percent. Put directly, we're only able to fill just three out of each 4 job positions in the computer industry.

Gaining full commercial computing certification is correspondingly an effective route to realise a continuing and worthwhile career.

It would be hard to imagine if a better time or market circumstances could exist for obtaining certification in this hugely increasing and evolving industry.

One useful service offered by some training providers is a Job Placement Assistance program. The service is put in place to help you find your first job in the industry. At the end of the day it's not as hard as some people make out to land your first job - assuming you're well trained and qualified; the growing UK skills shortage sees to that.

Bring your CV up to date as soon as possible however (advice and support for this should come from your course provider). Don't wait until you've qualified.

It's possible that you won't have even passed your first exam when you land your first junior support position; yet this won't be the case if your CV isn't in front of employers.

If it's important to you to find work near your home, then you'll probably find that a local (but specialised) recruitment consultancy might serve you better than some national concern, for they're going to know local employment needs.

A good number of students, it seems, are prepared to study their hearts out (sometimes for years), only to give up at the first hurdle when attempting to secure a good job. Introduce yourself... Do everything you can to get in front of employers. A job isn't just going to bump into you.

Commercial qualifications are now, undoubtedly, starting to replace the more academic tracks into the IT sector - but why is this?

With fees and living expenses for university students spiralling out of control, alongside the industry's recognition that accreditation-based training is often far more commercially relevant, we've seen a big surge in CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA accredited training routes that educate students at a fraction of the cost and time involved.

Higher education courses, for example, can often get caught up in a lot of loosely associated study - with much too broad a syllabus. This prevents a student from understanding the specific essentials in enough depth.

Just as the old advertisement said: 'It does what it says on the tin'. All an employer has to do is know what areas need to be serviced, and then advertise for someone with the specific certification. Then they're assured that a potential employee can do exactly what's required.

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