IT Training Tips

Introduction and Foundation IT courses

Some rogue training companies have realised they can make a fortune by making prospective students undertake introduction or foundation IT courses before allowing them to take any of their other courses, typically those based on certification.

This cash cow they've created is so simple, especially when their potential customers know very little or even nothing about IT. It just involves persuading the victims, sorry students into believing such introductory courses are necessary to proceed further including telling them tall tales along the lines of,

"Well, without this foundation course, you may struggle with the rest of the course", or

"We're not allowed by the certification companies to allow anyone without a foundation course to study for their certifications".

All of which is blatant lies, as not certification provider would stipulate the mandatory requirement of some form of foundation course, other than some form of work experience. If these certification providers could see how rubbish these foundation courses are, I suspect they'd be shocked.

Foundation courses

I've seen these courses at first hand, one of my friends foolishly ended up doing one of these courses. The foundation course they had started was utter tripe which served no purpose other than line the pockets of the company providing the course.

Fortunately they'd only paid for the first part of the course, that is, the foundation part and hadn't shelled out for the whole course. So their losses were not as large as would have been if they'd paid for the whole course upfront.

The more I spent reading the foundation course material the more disgusted I was, especially when I was told how much the course had cost, which made me feel very annoyed.

My annoyance was compounded by the fact that the unsuspecting individual, who knew nothing about IT would assume this course was the norm. They would spend a lot of their time going through the hogwash it contains, with the belief it was aiding their advancement into the world of IT.

IT Dummies guide

To be honest, if you want a good introduction to most IT subjects, the Dummies Guide books can provide an excellent grounding. Best of all, these books don't cost much and are well written. Even I have to confess to using these books sometimes on subjects areas I have very little knowledge.

These guides can also give a choice at a low risk option, that is, if you don't like a specific IT subject from a dummies guide, then you'll only lose the cost of the guide. Imagine paying thousands for a course, finding out it's rubbish or not what you wanted to do, you could end up losing a lot of money. With a dummies guide , if you don't like it, it's no real loss.

Homework

Before I embark on something new, I try to do some homework first, by doing some research and trying to read reviews. This reduces the risk I expose myself to, including financial risk of losing my hard earned cash.

Unfortunately most people don't do the required due diligence and end up leaping into the unknown. Even a leap of faith into the unknown can cause problems and that's why many can end up losing a lot of money.