Computer and network support staff are constantly in demand in Great Britain, as companies have come to depend on their technical advice and capacity to solve problems. Our desire for such skilled and qualified individuals is growing at an impressive rate, as industry becomes progressively more technologically advanced.

One useful service that many training companies provide is a Job Placement Assistance program. It's intention is to steer you into your first IT role. With the growing skills shortage in the United Kingdom today, it's not too important to make too much of this option though. It isn't so complicated as you might think to get your first job once you're well trained and qualified.

Help with your CV and interview techniques may be available (if not, see one of our sites for help). Be sure to you bring your CV right up to date straight away - don't wait until you've finished your exams! Having the possibility of an interview is more than not being regarded at all. A decent number of junior jobs are bagged by people (who've only just left first base.) If you'd like to keep travelling time and costs to a minimum, then it's quite likely that a specialist independent regional recruitment consultant or service might work much better for you than some national concern, as they are much more inclined to be familiar with local employment needs.

Not inconsiderable numbers of students, apparently, put a great deal of effort into their studies (for years sometimes), and just give up when it comes to attempting to secure their first job. Sell yourself... Make an effort to get in front of employers. Don't think a job's just going to jump out in front of you.

We can't make a big enough deal out of this point: You have to get round-the-clock 24x7 support from professional instructors. Later, you'll kick yourself if you don't heed this. Look for training with help available at any time you choose (even if it's early hours on Sunday morning!) Ensure you get direct access to tutors, and not access to a call-in service which takes messages - so you're consistently being held in a queue for a call-back during office hours.

We recommend looking for providers that have multiple support offices active in different time-zones. All of them should be combined to provide a single interface as well as access round-the-clock, when you want it, without any problems. Never compromise where support is concerned. The vast majority of students that drop-out or fail, are in that situation because of support (or the lack of).

When did you last consider how safe your job is? Typically, this only rears its head when we experience a knock-back. However, the reality is that true job security has gone the way of the dodo, for all but the most lucky of us. We can however discover security at market-level, by digging for areas that have high demand, tied with a shortage of skilled staff.

The 2006 British e-Skills survey highlighted that more than 26 percent of computing and IT jobs cannot be filled mainly due to an appallingly low number of appropriately certified professionals. Put simply, we only have the national capacity to fill just three out of each 4 job positions in the computer industry. Fully qualified and commercially certified new staff are thus at a resounding premium, and it seems it will continue to be so for a long time. In actuality, retraining in Information Technology over the coming years is almost definitely the best career direction you could choose.

Be alert that all certifications you're studying for will be commercially viable and are bang up to date. 'In-house' certificates are generally useless. From the viewpoint of an employer, only the top companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA or Adobe (as an example) will open the right doors. Nothing else hits the mark.

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