There are two specialised areas of training in the A+ syllabus, and you're just required to achieve pass marks in each for your A+ qualification. Once you start your CompTIA A+, you'll become familiar with how to work in antistatic conditions and build and fix computers. You'll also cover fault finding and diagnostics, through both hands-on and remote access. You may also want to consider adding the CompTIA Network+ training as you can then also become a networking engineer, which is where the bigger salaries are.

We're often asked why traditional academic studies are being replaced by more commercial certifications? With 3 and 4 year academic degree costs increasing year on year, together with the IT sector's general opinion that corporate based study often has more relevance in the commercial field, we have seen a great increase in Microsoft, CISCO, Adobe and CompTIA based training programmes that educate students for much less time and money. They do this through focusing on the skills that are really needed (along with an appropriate level of background knowledge,) instead of going into the heightened depths of background 'extras' that computer Science Degrees are prone to get tied up in (because the syllabus is so wide).

In simple terms: Accredited IT qualifications provide exactly what an employer needs - everything they need to know is in the title: for example, I am a 'Microsoft Certified Professional' in 'Managing and Maintaining Windows Server 2003'. Therefore an employer can identify exactly what they need and which qualifications are required to perform the job.

Students often end up having issues because of one aspect of their training which doesn't even occur to them: How the training is broken down and couriered to your address. Training companies will normally offer a program typically taking 1-3 years, and deliver each piece one-by-one as you get to the end of each exam. On the surface this seems reasonable - until you consider the following: Students often discover that the company's typical path to completion doesn't suit. They might find a slightly different order suits them better. Could it cause problems if you don't get everything done at the pace they expect?

In a perfect world, you want everything at the start - enabling you to have them all to return to any point - irrespective of any schedule. This also allows you to vary the order in which you complete your exams as and when something more intuitive seems right for you.

We'd all like to believe that our careers will always be safe and our work futures are protected, but the growing reality for most sectors around the United Kingdom currently is that there is no security anymore. Wherever we find rising skills deficits mixed with rising demand however, we generally reveal a new kind of market-security; driven forward by a continual growth, businesses find it hard to locate enough staff.

A recent British e-Skills study brought to light that over 26 percent of all available IT positions haven't been filled because of a huge deficit of properly qualified workers. That means for every four jobs existing across the computer industry, there are only 3 trained people to perform that task. This disquieting fact highlights the urgent need for more properly qualified computing professionals around the United Kingdom. Without a doubt, now, more than ever, really is such a perfect time to train for IT.

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