There are four specialist areas of training in a full CompTIA A+ program; you’re thought of as competent at A+ when you’ve achieved certifications for just two specialist areas. This is the reason that most colleges only have two of the courses on their syllabus. In fact it’s necessary to have the training for all four areas as many positions will be looking for knowledge and skills of all four areas. You don’t have to complete all 4 certifications, but we would recommend you learn about all four.
A+ computer training courses cover diagnostics and fault finding – both remote access and hands-on, as well as learning to build, repair and fix and working in antistatic conditions.
You might also choose to think about doing Network+ as it will enable you to work with networks, which means greater employment benefits.
The area most overlooked by new students considering a training program is the concept of ‘training segmentation’. Essentially, this is the breakdown of the materials for timed release to you, which vastly changes how you end up.
Typically, you will purchase a course requiring 1-3 years study and get sent one module each time you pass an exam. It seems to make sense on one level, but consider these issues:
What would their reaction be if you find it difficult to do each and every module at the required speed? Often the staged order doesn’t come as naturally as some other order of studying might.
In a perfect world, you’d get ALL the training materials right at the beginning – so you’ll have them all for the future to come back to – as and when you want. This allows a variation in the order that you move through the program if another more intuitive route presents itself.
It only makes sense to consider training courses which will move onto industry recognised certifications. There are way too many small colleges offering unknown ‘in-house’ certificates which will prove unusable in today’s commercial market.
From an employer’s viewpoint, only the major heavyweights like Microsoft, CompTIA, Adobe or Cisco (for example) will get you into the interview seat. Anything less just won’t hit the right spot.
Usually, trainers will provide piles of reference manuals and workbooks. This can be very boring and not ideal for studying effectively.
Memory is vastly improved when we use multiple senses – educational experts have expounded on this for decades now.
Modern training can now be done at home via easy-to-use DVD or CD ROM’s. Instructor-led tutorials will mean you’ll find things easier to remember by way of their teaching and demonstrations. Then you test your knowledge by interacting with the software and practicing yourself.
You’ll definitely want a demonstration of the study materials from any training college. You’ll want to see instructor videos, demonstrations, slide-shows and lab’s for you to practice your skills in.
Seek out CD and DVD ROM based physical training media if possible. You’re then protected from broadband outages, failure and signal quality issues etc.
Finding job security nowadays is incredibly rare. Businesses will throw us from the workplace at the drop of a hat – as and when it suits them.
However, a quickly growing market-place, with a constant demand for staff (through an enormous shortage of trained workers), provides a market for real job security.
Reviewing the Information Technology (IT) market, the 2006 e-Skills study highlighted a twenty six percent skills deficit. Therefore, out of each 4 positions in existence in Information Technology (IT), companies can only source enough qualified individuals for 3 of the 4.
Highly taught and commercially grounded new workers are as a result at a resounding premium, and in all likelihood it will stay that way for many years longer.
No better time or market settings could exist for acquiring training in this swiftly expanding and evolving sector.
Copyright 2009 S. Edwards. Pop to Comptia Certification or Comptia Training.