Still looking for advice please

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Hello there,

Firstly apologies cos I know these type of questions get asked a lot and it must really grate some of you to keep repeating yourself.

I currently work in a financial institution in London. I have worked in the city for approx 13 years. I have been considering a change of career for some time and have always been interested in IT. My job is pretty stressful and unsatisfying and was hoping that I could couple my financial knowledge with a career in IT. I'm particularly keen on web development and design. I have looked at a number of courses with various training providers including computeach and National IT learning centre. They basically want around 5 grand for the entire course and offer the Microsoft Track and CIW track. I'm not overly keen to part with that type of money initially and was hoping to complete basic level of this using self study. Sort of try before I buy sorta thing.

So I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. Firstly what wld be the most industry recognised qualification Microsoft or CIW ? Secondly what type of materials would I need to complete the foundation or basics of each course. Is there specific books, CD's or websites dedicated to this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

 

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I would point you away from any company that wants 5 grand for training courses.

If you want to be a Web developer/designer, learn to develop/design Web pages. It's as simple as that. Web dev companies don't care much about what certifications you have... they care about the sites you can design, and your e-portfolio should back that up.

 

Thanks very much for the advice. It is very much appreciated. So you wld say that qualifications or certifications are irrelevant when it comes to web development? I though that maybe I would need some sort of qualification to get get my foot in the door. As i said I would like to couple my knowledge of the financial industry with a suitable career in IT so where would be a good place to start learning. What books or materials would you recommend. I really want to get cracking on this learning as much as I can through self study whilst still working in my current job. Any advice, tips or basic help you could all give will be very much appreciated. Cheers

 

Irrelevant? No. But they're not as much of a factor as they are with technical administration jobs, because with Web development, you can SHOW an employer what you can do. I can't really SHOW an employer that I can administer networks.

I'm not a developer, so I don't know what all is out there. But if I wanted to learn it, I'd see what books were out there, find some with good reviews, and start learning.

 

My advice would be to learn about IIS and Apache as well as HTML and the various Web Dev. products out there such as the Adobe range.

You should also learn about photo editing software (after all you may be called upon to touch up some photos for web sites) as well as graphics packages (gif\jpg\png packages, again the likes of Adobe).

Web development covers a wide range of different products and practices, so you probably want to decide what part of it you like most and concentrate on that.

 

Thanks to everyone that has replied. You have gave me a few things to think over. I appreciate the help. Cheers.