A Good road to go Down??

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi everyone,

I am currently in the R.A.F. as an aircraft engineer, and will be leaving in the next 18 months. Part of leaving the forces involves resettlement training and I am looking at starting a career in I.T. (that's why I’m here after all!)

I have no experience in I.T. at the moment but after reading a few posts here it would seem that a good place to begin is the Comptia A+ certification, this training would be provided over 4 weeks and provided by the forces at Aldershot.

After that, there is another course which is again provided by the forces which comprises of Comptia Network+, Security+ and a module on forensics. This is over 4 weeks and would cost me £534.

Basically, is this a good road to go down to begin an I.T. career? I am looking at roles such as Network administrator, Security (in some form or other) or Desktop support (in which case I would look to study the MCDST, or latest equivalent)

Good or bad route?? Opinions welcome

Thanks in advance

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi mate, nice to see someone from Crab Air make an appearance (a couple of ex squaddies, myself included, post here).

As far as courses go, the Comptia ones are a great place to start with, one thing you need to be aware of however is that from 1st Jan 2011 you will need to recertify every 3 years with your Comptia exams.

If you can, perhaps see about doing some self study before the end of the year and see if you can get the exam done before hand (it also gives you the exposure to the technology now and gives you a great standing for when you do leave the forces (after all, you would have had the A+ for 12 - 18 months and that can only be good)).

As far as further courses go, you really need to decide what it is you want from a career in IT because you may simply not be cut out for the life in a Service Desk and decide you want to do something else instead, until you have a better idea of what it is you do want to do I would hold back on deciding which courses to get.

Also a word of advice, IT isn't the get rich quick scheme that people expect it to be, don't come into IT expecting to be earning pots of gold after 6 - 12 months, infact not even 3 - 5 years if I am honest with you. Why you may ask? simply because there are way too many people in the field now, it makes it an employers market and there are people out there willing to do the job for less money than you are.

Good luck with whatever you do.