Does an MCSE appeal to you? If the answer's 'yes', there's a good chance that you'll fall into one of two camps: You're someone with a certain amount of knowledge and you'd like to consolidate your skill-set with the MCSE qualification. In contrast you might be just about to enter commercial IT, and you've found there's lots of demand for men and women who are commercially qualified.

During your research, you will discover training providers that lower their out-goings by not providing the latest version from Microsoft. Don't use this type of college as it will create challenges for you at exam time. If your knowledge is of an out-of-date syllabus, it could be impossible to pass. Watch out for computer training companies that are simply out to sell something. Always remember that buying an MCSE course is similar to buying a car. They vary hugely; some are comfortable and reliable, whilst others will constantly let you down. A worthy company will offer you plenty of help to make sure a course is right for you. If they're confident of their product, you will be able to look at examples of training materials before you buy.

So, why ought we to be looking at commercial qualifications as opposed to the usual academic qualifications gained through schools and Further Education colleges? Industry is now aware that for an understanding of the relevant skills, official accreditation from companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA often is more effective in the commercial field - for considerably less. Obviously, a necessary degree of relevant additional knowledge has to be learned, but essential specialisation in the areas needed gives a commercially educated student a distinct advantage.

Just like the advert used to say: 'It does what it says on the tin'. All an employer has to do is know where they have gaps, and then advertise for someone with the specific certification. Then they know that anyone who applies can do the necessary work.

One feature provided by many trainers is a programme of Job Placement assistance. This is to steer you into your first IT role. In reality it's not as difficult as you may be led to believe to land a job - as long as you're correctly trained and certified; the shortage of IT personnel in Britain looks after that.

Get your CV updated straight-away though - you should get plenty of help from your training provider on this. Don't put it off until you've qualified. Various junior support roles have been bagged by students who're still on their course and haven't got any qualifications yet. This will at least get you into the 'maybe' pile of CV's - rather than the 'No' pile. In many cases, a local IT focused employment agency (who will, of course, be keen to place you to receive their commission) is going to give you a better service than a sector of a centralised training facility. Also of course they should be familiar with the local area and commercial needs.

Many men and women, so it seems, spend evenings and weekends on their training and studies (for years sometimes), only to do nothing special when attempting to secure the right position. Promote yourself... Do everything you can to get in front of employers. Don't think a job's just going to jump out in front of you.

Quite often, students have issues with a single courseware aspect which is often not even considered: The breakdown of the course materials before being physically delivered to you. A release of your materials one piece at a time, according to your own speed is the typical way that your program will arrive. This sounds sensible, but you might like to consider this: Often, the staged breakdown pushed by the company's salespeople doesn't suit all of us. What if you find it hard to complete all the elements inside their defined time-scales?

An ideal situation would be to have all the training materials delivered to your address right at the beginning; the complete package! This prevents any future issues from rising that will affect the reaching of your goals.

It would be wonderful to believe that our jobs will always be secure and our future is protected, but the growing likelihood for most jobs throughout the UK currently seems to be that there is no security anymore. Wherever we find increasing skills shortfalls coupled with rising demand though, we always discover a new kind of security in the marketplace; as fuelled by a continual growth, businesses are struggling to hire the number of people required.

The 2006 British e-Skills analysis brought to light that more than 26 percent of all available IT positions remain unfilled because of a huge deficit of appropriately certified professionals. This shows that for each four job positions available across computing, we've only got three properly trained pro's to fulfil that role. Well trained and commercially certified new workers are as a result at a total premium, and it seems it will continue to be so for much longer. It would be hard to imagine if a better time or market conditions will exist for getting certified in this hugely emerging and blossoming business.