One area often overlooked by potential students thinking about a course is the issue of 'training segmentation'. This basically means the method used to break up the program for delivery to you, which vastly changes how you end up. You may think that it makes sense (with a typical time scale of 1-3 years to gain full certified status,) that a training provider will issue the training stage by stage, as you achieve each exam pass. Although: What happens when you don't complete every single exam? And what if the order provided doesn't meet your requirements? Because of nothing that's your fault, you may not meet the required timescales and therefore not end up with all the modules.

In an ideal situation, you want everything at the start - meaning you'll have all of them to come back to at any time in the future - as and when you want. This also allows you to vary the order in which you complete your exams where a more intuitive path can be found.

A major candidate for the most common difficulty for IT trainees is usually having to turn up to 'In Centre' days or workshops. A lot of certification companies wax lyrical on the so-called 'benefits' of these classes, however, they quickly become a burden to be carried because of:

- Lots of centre visits - normally 100's of miles.

- Taking constant holidays or time off - most colleges will only provide weekday availability and typically group 2-3 days together. If you're working then this can be difficult, and it's made more problematic when you add the travel time on.

- If we've got 4 weeks off each year, using half of that on study events leaves us with very few opportunities for days off.

- 'In-Centre' workshop days fill up quickly and often end up larger than is ideal.

- Workshop pace - centre-days usually feature students of mixed abilities, consequently tension can run high between students that want a quicker pace to the ones who need a little longer.

- You shouldn't overlook the added financial outlay of driving and accommodation over-night either. Don't be surprised to find this become 00's or even 000's extra. Do the maths yourself - you'll get a shock.

- Is it worth the chance of being passed-over for a lift up the ladder or wage increases because you're getting trained in a different area.

- Surely, all of us at some time have shied away from raising a hand in the air, because we didn't want to look stupid?

- Working and living away - some students find they have to work or live somewhere else for sections of the programme. Events become very difficult then, yet you've already coughed up the readies as part of your fees.

Surely it makes more sense to be trained at a time that's convenient for you - not the school - and use instructor-led videos with interactive lab's. You could study at home on your computer or if you've got a laptop, you can go anywhere. If you have any questions, then utilise the 24x7 Support (that you should have insisted on for any technical study.) Repeat lessons and modules at any time you need to brush up - memory is aided by repetition. And you can forget taking notes - everything is prepared ready. Basically: You save on money, time, hassle and steer clear of killing more trees.

Qualifications from the commercial sector are now, very visibly, taking over from the traditional academic paths into IT - so why is this happening? Industry now recognises that to learn the appropriate commercial skills, official accreditation from the likes of Microsoft, CISCO, Adobe and CompTIA most often has much more specialised relevance - for much less time and money. Essentially, only that which is required is learned. It's slightly more broad than that, but the principle objective is to focus on the exact skills required (along with a certain amount of crucial background) - without overdoing the detail in everything else (as academia often does).

Just like the advert used to say: 'It does what it says on the tin'. Companies need only to know what they're looking for, and then request applicants with the correct exam numbers. That way they can be sure they're interviewing applicants who can do the job.

Be on the lookout that any accreditations you're considering doing are commercially relevant and are current. The 'in-house' certifications provided by many companies are not normally useful in gaining employment. The top IT companies like Microsoft, Adobe, CompTIA or Cisco have globally recognised skills programmes. These big-hitters will ensure your employability.

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