CompTIA A + has a total of four exams and areas of study, but your only requirement is to get certified in 2 to be considered A+ competent. Because of this, many educational establishments restrict their course to just 2 areas. But giving you all four options will provide you with a much wider knowledge and understanding of it all, something you’ll discover is essential in professional employment.

Once on the A+ computer training course you’ll be taught how to build, fix, repair and work in antistatic conditions. Fault finding and diagnostic techniques through hands on and remote access are also covered.

Perhaps you see yourself as the kind of individual who is a member of a large organisation – fixing and supporting networks, you’ll need to add CompTIA Network+, or consider an MCSA or MCSE with Microsoft to give you a deeper understanding of the way networks work.

In first place for the biggest single let-down in the IT training sector is often the ‘in-centre’ workshop requirement. Most certification companies harp on about the plus points of attending, but most students end up finding them a major problem because of:

* Lots of round trips – quite often hundreds of miles each and every time.

* Monday to Friday availability with events can be usual, and with two or three days required at a time, this is usually problematic for a lot of trainees who are working.

* The majority of us end up feeling twenty days annual leave is barely enough. Knock off a big chunk of this for training workshops and see how much more difficult it makes things.

* Taking into account the costs associated with delivering a workshop, a lot of training providers have to put on larger classes – which is not ideal (increasing the ratio of students to teachers).

* The ‘pace’ – centre-days can have students of varying aptitude, therefore there is often tension between those that want to go quickly as opposed to those who want to go a little slower.

* Let’s not forget the extra expense of arranging transport and bed and breakfast for the night either. This can run to hundreds and even thousands of pounds extra. Take some time to add it all up – you may be surprised.

* Maintaining the privacy of our training can be very important to most trainees. Why would you want to lose any lift up the ladder, wage increases or achievement in your job because you’re getting trained in a different area. If your employer knows you’ve committed to accreditation in a different industry, what will they think?

* Don’t think it’s unusual for trainees to not ask questions they want answered – simply down to the fact that they’re amongst other classmates.

* For those who have work away from home, it’s a fact of life that days in-centre now become difficult to get to – but unfortunately, they’ve been paid for in advance.

It would be better to simply watch and gain knowledge from tutors one-to-one in videoed classes, studying them when it’s convenient for you, not someone else.

Training can take place wherever it suits you. If your PC is a laptop, you could catch some sun in your garden as you learn. Any issues that arise just utilise the 24×7 Support.

Note-taking is gone forever – you have the lessons and accompanying information ready-made for you. If you need to cover something again, you’ve got it all.

The bottom line: Less hassle and stress, more money in the bank, and absolutely no travelling.

The area most overlooked by new students thinking about a course is that of ‘training segmentation’. This basically means the breakdown of the materials for timed release to you, which can make a dramatic difference to how you end up.

Trainees may consider it sensible (when study may take one to three years to gain full certified status,) for your typical trainer to courier the training stage by stage, as you pass each element. Although:

What if you don’t finish every exam? What if you don’t find their order of learning is ideal for you? Because of nothing that’s your fault, you might take a little longer and therefore not end up with all the modules.

For maximum flexibility and safety, it’s normal for most trainees to insist that all study materials are delivered immediately, and not in stages. It’s then your own choice in which order and at what speed you’d like to take your exams.

Qualifications from the commercial sector are now, very visibly, starting to replace the traditional academic paths into the IT sector – why then is this the case?

With a growing demand for specific technological expertise, industry has been required to move to the specialised core-skills learning only available through the vendors themselves – for example companies like CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA. This frequently provides reductions in both cost and time.

Obviously, a reasonable quantity of closely linked knowledge has to be learned, but essential specifics in the exact job role gives a commercially educated person a real head start.

In simple terms: Authorised IT qualifications let employers know exactly what you’re capable of – everything they need to know is in the title: for example, I am a ‘Microsoft Certified Professional’ in ‘Designing Security for a Windows 2003 Network’. Therefore employers can identify just what their needs are and which qualifications will be suitable to deal with those needs.

(C) Jason Kendall. Navigate to LearningLolly.com for great career tips on Computer Courses and Comptia Certification Training.