It's essential to have an accredited exam preparation programme included in your course. Sometimes people can find themselves confused by practicing questions for their exams that don't come from the authorised examining boards. Quite often, the phraseology can be completely unlike un-authorised versions and you should be prepared for this. You should make sure you verify how much you know by doing quizzes and mock ups of exams prior to taking the real deal.

Commercial qualifications are now, most definitely, already replacing the traditional routes into the IT sector - but why has this come about? The IT sector is of the opinion that for mastery of skill sets for commercial use, the right accreditation supplied for example by CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA is closer to the mark commercially - for much less time and money. University courses, as a example, often get bogged down in vast amounts of loosely associated study - with much too broad a syllabus. This holds a student back from understanding the specific essentials in enough depth.

Just like the advert used to say: 'It does what it says on the label'. Companies need only to know what they need doing, and then advertise for someone with the specific certification. Then they know that anyone who applies can do the necessary work.

For the most part, the average person has no idea how they should get into the IT industry, or which area is worth considering for retraining. Working through a list of IT job-titles is next to useless. The majority of us don't even know what the neighbours do for a living - so we have no hope of understanding the ins and outs of a specific IT job. Getting to a well-informed answer only comes through a thorough examination of many different factors:

- Your personality type and what you're interested in - what work-centred jobs you like and dislike.

- What is the time-frame for your training?

- Have you thought about salary vs the travel required?

- Considering all that the IT industry covers, it's important to be able to understand what's different.

- It's wise to spend some time thinking about the amount of time and effort you'll put into your training.

The bottom line is, your only chance of checking this all out is through an in-depth discussion with someone who through years of experience will give you the information required.

The vendor-neutral global organisation CompTIA now offers perhaps the most recognised & widely-respected impartial IT certifications. Companies such as 'ISC2' offer Security accreditations, and 'CWNP' offer specialist wireless networking paths. Most conspicuously not surprisingly are Cisco & Microsoft themselves, both providing their very own qualification tracks. The options may well be a bit overwhelming, & therefore we urge you to tread very carefully and discuss all your alternatives with an advisor who knows the process very well. With no individually tailored help you could head-off in a wrong-direction & squander a lot of time or money.

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