People at the very beginning of their PC literacy learning-curve should choose the ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence. Most personal PC's run on a system called Microsoft Windows, and your 'ECDL' addresses the way to run it's basic elements. You can also get ti know about web-browsers (so you're able to browse the net,) plus email software (to help you to be in touch with colleagues and friends.) A bit is also taught about how to work with spreadsheets and carry out some word-processing.

Moving things on a step further, you may well be looking for more vocational training to improve your employment prospects. A wide knowledge of Microsoft 'Office' is the skill-set most need at this level. Two industry recognised accreditation courses are 'MOS' ('Microsoft Office Specialist') and MCAS ('Microsoft Certification Application Specialist'). MOS has been about for longer & emphasises Office 2003 & XP, which is still well utilised commercially. MCAS features 'Office' 2007 and Vista, so no doubt offers better life expectancy. Each Microsoft Office application is examined with each of the qualifications, that is - Excel for spreadsheets, 'Access' for databases, PowerPoint for presentations & "Word" for word-processing. These qualifications will indicate to a company that you're adequately skilled to use these applications to their maximum extent.

Workshop days can be portrayed as an important element by many training companies. After a good chat with many computer industry hopefuls who have used them, you'll find they generally end up being seen as a major problem because of many things:

- A lot of travelling to and from the training centre - usually 100's of miles.

- Workshop accessibility; normally Monday to Friday and usually 2-3 days at a time. You then have the difficulty of the work-leave.

- With just twenty days annual leave, sacrificing half of them for training days often means losing out on family and vacation time.

- 'In-Centre' days often become quickly full, meaning we have to accept the '2nd best' solution.

- Workshop pace - classes normally have students of varied aptitude, therefore tension can run high between the quicker-learners and the ones who need a little longer.

- Calculate the increasing cost of all the travel, fares, food, accommodation and parking and you could be in for a major shock. Trainees talk of increased costs of hundreds to thousands of pounds over time. Take some time to add it all up - and understand where they're coming from.

- Most trainees want to keep their training private thus avoiding all come-back at work.

- Surely, all of us at some time have avoided posing that question we were dying to ask, just because we wanted to look smarter?

- If you occasionally work away from home, it's a fact of life that events can often become impossible to get to - and yet, they've already been paid for.

Many students discover a more flexible approach is to exploit pre-made workshops at the location of your choice - at a time that's convenient to you - not someone else. Do them at home on your desktop computer or if you've got a laptop, you can go anywhere. Any questions; then use the provided 24x7 live support (that we hope you'll insist on with any technical courses.) You'll never have to write notes again - all the lessons are prepared and laid out for you - ready to go. Any time you want to repeat something, it's right there. The final upshot: Much less stress and hassle, more money in the bank, and no travelling or long journeys.

Many folks don't understand what IT is all about. It's electrifying, revolutionary, and means you're a part of the huge progress of technology that will impact the whole world for generations to come. Technology, computers and interaction through the web will spectacularly shape our lives over future years; incredibly so.

Should receiving a good salary be around the top on your scale of wants, you will appreciate the fact that the average salary of IT employees in general is noticeably better than with the rest of the economy. Due to the technological sector emerging at an unprecedented rate, it's predictable that the search for well trained and qualified IT technicians will continue to boom for a good while yet.

The market provides a glut of employment in IT. Deciding which one could be right out of this complexity is generally problematic. Consequently, without any know-how of the IT market, what chance is there for you to know what a particular IT employee actually does day-to-day? And of course decide on what educational path will be most suitable for ultimate success. To get to the bottom of this, a discussion is necessary, covering several different aspects:

- What nature of individual you think yourself to be - the tasks that you enjoy, and conversely - what you definitely don't enjoy.

- What is the time-frame for the retraining?

- Have you thought about salary vs the travel required?

- With so many markets to choose from in IT - it's wise to get a solid grounding on what differentiates them.

- Taking a serious look into the effort, commitment and time you can give.

For the average person, dissecting so much data needs a long talk with a professional who can explain things properly. And we're not only talking about the certifications - but also the commercial requirements and expectations of industry too.

Lately, do you find yourself questioning the security of your job? For most of us, we only think of this after something goes wrong. Unfortunately, the lesson often learned too late is that true job security is a thing of the past, for the vast majority of people. Security can now only exist in a fast growing market, fuelled by a shortage of trained workers. It's this alone that creates the appropriate conditions for a higher level of market-security - a far better situation.

The most recent British e-Skills analysis demonstrated that 26 percent of all available IT positions are unfilled due to a lack of well-trained staff. Accordingly, out of each 4 positions available around the computer industry, employers are only able to locate certified professionals for 3 of them. This disturbing notion underpins an urgent requirement for more technically trained computing professionals across Great Britain. As the Information Technology market is evolving at the speed it is, there really isn't any other market worth taking into account for retraining.

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