If there's any chance you'll be enrolling with a training school that still utilises 'in-centre workshop days' as a necessary part of their training, then listen to these difficulties experienced by most trainees:

- Regular driving or public transport - hundreds of miles usually.

- Asking for time off work - typical colleges will only provide Mon-Fri class availability - typically grouping 2 or 3 days together. This can be hard for a lot of working people, especially if you include the travel time on top.

- Most of us end up feeling 4 weeks off each year is not really enough. Spend over half of it for training events and watch how much harder things become.

- Workshop days fill up fast and will likely end up bigger than you'd hoped.

- The pace of the class - centre-days usually have students of different aptitude, so tension develops between those that want to go quickly as opposed to those who prefer a more relaxed pace.

- And don't forget the added financial outlay of travelling and over-night accommodation either. Often, this will cost many hundreds of pounds more - sometimes thousands. Sit down and add it up - it'll shock and surprise you.

- Most trainees want study privacy and therefore avoiding all management questions from their current employer.

- Posing questions in the presence of other class-mates sometimes makes us a little nervous. Would you admit that you've occasionally avoided posing a question as you didn't want to appear stupid?

- If your work takes you away from home, you face the added difficulty that days in-centre now become impossible to get to - and yet, they've been paid for in advance.

It would be better to watch on-screen and gain knowledge from tutors one-to-one via pre-made modules, doing them when it's convenient for you, not someone else. You could study at home on your desktop computer or use your laptop to enjoy the sun. Any questions that pop up, just use the provided 24x7 live support (that should've been packaged with any technical type of training.) Repeat any of the classes at any time you need to brush up - memory is aided by repetition. And you can say goodbye to note-taking - it's already laid on for you. Though this can't completely avoid every single problem, it undeniably removes stress and makes things simpler. You've also got less hassle, travel and costs.

How the program is actually delivered to you is usually ignored by most students. How many stages do they break the program into? What is the order and at what speed is it delivered? Individual deliveries for each training module one piece at a time, according to your own speed is the normal way of receiving your courseware. This sounds logical, but you must understand the following: Students often discover that the trainer's standard order of study is not what they would prefer. Sometimes, varying the order of study will be far more suitable. Could it cause problems if you don't get everything done at the pace they expect?

To provide the maximum security and flexibility, it's not unusual for students to insist that all study materials are posted to them in one go, with nothing held back. That means it's down to you how fast or slow and in what order you'd like to work.

It's important to understand: the training program or a qualification isn't what this is about; the particular job that you're getting the training for is. A lot of colleges seem to put too much weight in the actual accreditation. It's a terrible situation, but the majority of trainees commence training that sounds amazing from the sales literature, but which provides a job that is of no interest at all. Just ask several college leavers and you'll see where we're coming from.

Prioritise understanding what expectations industry may have of you. Which precise accreditations you'll be required to have and how you'll build your experience level. It's also worth spending time assessing how far you reckon you're going to want to get as often it can control your selection of accreditations. Always seek guidance and advice from an experienced industry advisor, even if there's a fee involved - it's considerably cheaper and safer to investigate at the start whether your choices are appropriate, instead of finding out after several years of study that you've picked the wrong track and have wasted years of effort.

When did you last consider the security of your job? For most of us, we only think of this after we experience a knock-back. But in today's marketplace, the lesson often learned too late is that job security simply doesn't exist anymore, for nearly everyone now. However, a marketplace with high growth, with huge staffing demands (through a massive shortage of fully trained staff), opens the possibility of lasting job security.

Looking at the computing business, a recent e-Skills study highlighted a twenty six percent skills deficit. Meaning that for every 4 jobs in existence throughout Information Technology (IT), we have only 3 certified professionals to fill that need. Attaining proper commercial computing accreditation is thus a fast-track to a long-term and satisfying occupation. It's unlikely if a better time or market settings will exist for acquiring training in this quickly expanding and developing market.

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