Starting at the bottom

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.

I am currently unemployed atm and I'm looking at getting into the IT industry, but I don't know where to start. I'd like to know what certificates I should go after first and whether or not if it's advisable to do the training with one of the big training companies.

 

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.

Starting certs are compTIA A+, compTIA network + and Microsofts MCDST.

I have never used a training company for my certs as I can guarantee myself the best materials and most important of all is that it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

Most training companies will bind you into a set of courses some of which you should not do due to your experience level and the cost will be extortionate and since your unemployed I would advise that you self study instead of getting yourself in debt.

However if you are the sort of person who needs face to face instructor led training then I would advise looking at your local colleges and not to even contemplate a TP.

 

I agree with GBL. I am currently working towards the Comptia N+ exam myself and it's really not that taxing, it is certainly something that you can self study for and it's easy enough to understand most of it once you have been over it a couple of times.

Get yourself a couple of good books, maybe put a post on here for a lab partner to learn with and do it yourself at home. For the A+ and N+ there are also some good videos on the professor messer site, which are free and very informative. They can just help to push things home in areas that are maybe difficult to read etc.

 

Thanks for stating the first certs to go for. How long do you reckon it'll take me to complete the compTIA A+, compTIA network + and Microsoft MCDST?

I'm a pretty fast learner, and with my current unemployment, I would like to get things started asap.

 

I was in your situation, took me 2 months of solid stuyding, building and taking PC apart before i was confident enough to take the exam.

Now i'm working on Network+ and MCDST

 

I totally agree!

Though that said, I would like to add "networking" (person to person) with like-minded individuals and pooling resources is a really good way to economise on acquiring knowledge, as is joining your local library and putting in book requests for anything that can't be "googled".