Ensure all your certifications are current and commercially required - you're wasting your time with studies that only give in-house certificates. To an employer, only the big-boys like Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe (to give some examples) will get you into the interview seat. Anything less just won't hit the right spot.

It's really quite possible if you are wanting to get into IT from a different career you'll need to begin your training course somewhere between these levels. Exactly where depends on the skill sets you already have. We'd suggest you talk about your options on training and I.T. careers with an industry expert should you have more technical ambitions. In actual fact, if you are considering a new career, make sure you have this discussion before you undertake any accreditation - to make sure you're taking the correct path from the outset. Thirty minutes of your time spent organising & evaluating the best way forward will pay dividends twelve months or so from now.

If you plan to aim for the first levels of professional IT accreditation, then User & Systems Support would be a logical step. The Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician ('MCDST') is certainly a good quality qualification if you're looking to offer technical help for commercial users. You'll typically need around 100 hrs of studying with this level.

We come into full IT professional career training programs at the next level. 'CompTIA' offer the most widely accepted entry to industry exams (namely A+ & 'Network+') for networking, hardware-support & security. Training will cover hardware & network installation at a fundamental level, and also aspects of security, support & administration. Study time is often predicted to be around two hundred to two hundred and fifty hrs to cover both, which can be reasonably carried out within six months on a part time basis.

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