Network and PC support staff are increasingly sought after in the UK, as institutions are becoming more reliant on their technical advice and skills. Industry's need for better commercially qualified individuals grows, as we turn out to be ever more dependent on computers in the modern world.

An important area that is sometimes not even considered by new students mulling over a new direction is 'training segmentation'. This is essentially the breakdown of the materials to be delivered to you, which makes a huge difference to the point you end up at. The majority of training companies will set up a 2 or 3 year study programme, and deliver each piece one-by-one as you complete each section or exam. On the surface this seems reasonable - until you consider the following: What would their reaction be if you find it difficult to do each element at the proposed pace? And maybe you'll find their order of completion won't be as easy as some other structure would for you.

For the perfect solution, you'd get ALL the training materials right at the beginning - meaning you'll have all of them to return to any point - as and when you want. This allows a variation in the order that you complete each objective where a more intuitive path can be found.

A typical blunder that potential students often succumb to is to concentrate on the course itself, instead of focusing on where they want to get to. Universities have thousands of students who chose a course based on what sounded good - instead of the program that would surely get them their end-goal of a job they enjoyed. It's not unheard of, in many cases, to thoroughly enjoy one year of training only to end up putting 20 long years into a job you hate, as an upshot of not doing some quality research when you should've - at the outset.

You also need to know your leanings around earning potential and career progression, and if you're ambitious or not. You should understand what (if any) sacrifices you'll need to make for a particular role, what particular accreditations are needed and how you'll gain real-world experience. Before you embark on a study course, it makes sense to talk through individual career requirements with an experienced advisor, in order to be sure the retraining path covers all the bases.

Make sure that all your exams are commercially valid and current - forget programmes that lead to in-house certificates. If your certification doesn't come from a conglomerate such as Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe or CompTIA, then you may discover it will be commercially useless - because no-one will recognise it.

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