Train Routes

In the UK today, industry would struggle were it not for support workers mending networks and computers, while giving advice to users on a constant basis. The world’s need for such qualified and commercially astute individuals is consistently on the grow, as everywhere we work becomes more and more dependent upon technology. Lately, do you find yourself questioning the security of your job? For most people, this isn’t an issue until something dramatic happens to shake us. However, The cold truth is that job security has gone the way of the dodo, for all but the most lucky of us. Security can now only exist through a quickly growing market, pushed forward by a lack of trained workers. It’s this shortage that creates the right environment for market-security – definitely a more pleasing situation. Taking a look at the computer business, the 2006 e-Skills investigation showed an over 26 percent shortage in trained professionals. Or, to put it differently, this means that the country can only find three qualified staff for each 4 positions available at the moment. This one idea in itself clearly demonstrates why Great Britain is in need of many more people to become part of the Information Technology market. We can’t imagine if a better time or market settings could exist for getting trained into this quickly emerging and budding sector. Potential trainees looking to start an Information Technology career normally aren’t sure which route is best, or what market to build their qualifications around. Because in the absence of any commercial background in IT, how could any of us be expected to understand what anyone doing a particular job actually does? To come through this, we need to discuss a variety of definitive areas: * Your personality can play an important role – what gets you ‘up and running’, and what are the areas that you really dislike. * Are you hoping to obtain training due to a precise reason – e.g. do you aim to work based at home (being your own boss?)?* Is your income higher on your wish list than anything else. * Looking at the many markets that the IT industry encompasses, it’s important to be able to take in what’s different.* You should also think long and hard about the level of commitment you’re going to invest in the accreditation program. In these situations, your only option to seek advice on these matters will be via a meeting with an experienced advisor who has a background in IT (and specifically it’s commercial needs.) People attracted to this sort of work often have a very practical outlook on work, and don’t always take well to classrooms, and slogging through piles of books. If this is putting you off studying, opt for more involving, interactive learning materials, where you can learn everything on-screen. Recent studies into the way we learn shows that we remember much more when we receive multi-sensorial input, and we take action to use what we’ve learned. Courses are now available on CD and DVD discs, so everything is learned directly from your own PC. Using video-streaming, you will be able to see the instructor presenting exactly how to perform the required skill, and then have a go at it yourself – in an interactive lab. Each company you’re contemplating should willingly take you through a few examples of their courseware. You should hope for instructor-led videos and a wide selection of interactive elements. Avoiding training that is delivered purely online is generally a good idea. Physical CD or DVD ROM materials are preferable where possible, so that you have access at all times – it’s not wise to be held hostage to a quality and continuous internet connection. Each programme of learning must provide a nationally accepted exam as an end-result – and not some unimportant ‘in-house’ plaque for your wall. All the major commercial players such as Microsoft, Adobe, CompTIA or Cisco each have internationally recognised proficiency programs. Major-league companies like these will make your CV stand-out.

What kind of things do you expect the top of the range training organisations accredited by Microsoft to provide a trainee in the UK today? Patently, the finest training tracks certified by Microsoft, offering a selection of courses to lead you to a variety of careers in the IT workplace. You may wish to discuss all the different permutations with an advisor who has knowledge of the requirements in the workplace, and will help you select the more likely roles to suit your personality. Once you’ve decided on the career path you want, you’ll need a relevant course customised to be right for your current level of knowledge and ability. The quality of training should leave no room for complaints. Any program that you’re going to undertake should always lead to a commercially valid qualification at the finale – and not some unimportant ‘in-house’ diploma – fit only for filing away and forgetting. The top IT companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe or CompTIA each have nationally recognised skills programs. These big-hitters will ensure your employability. Make sure you don’t get caught-up, as can often be the case, on the certification itself. Training is not an end in itself; this is about gaining commercial employment. Focus on the end-goal. It’s possible, in many cases, to find immense satisfaction in a year of study and then spend 20 miserable years in a job you hate, as an upshot of not doing the correct level of soul-searching at the beginning. You also need to know your feelings on career development, earning potential, plus your level of ambition. It’s vital to know what will be expected of you, which accreditations they want you to have and how you’ll gain real-world experience. Our recommendation would be to seek guidance and advice from a skilled advisor before you begin a study program, so you’re sure from the outset that the chosen route will give you the skills necessary. If you may be starting with a training company which is still using ‘in-centre’ days as a necessary part of their training, then listen to these typical downsides met by most trainees: * Multiple back and forth visits – quite often hundreds of miles each and every time. * Weekday only access with classes is usual, and with 2-3 days to book off work, this can be difficult for many working people. * And let’s not ignore lost holiday time. Most of us have 4 weeks off each year. If half of that is used up on workshops, then we haven’t got much left for ourselves. * ‘In-Centre’ days can get too big. * Class pace – centre-days normally have trainees of varied aptitude, therefore tension can be created between the quicker-learners and those who want to go a little slower. * Rising travel prices – driving to and from the training centre together with accommodation can cost a lot every time you have to go. If you only assumed a basic 5-10 classes costing 35 pounds for a single over-night room, plus forty pounds for petrol and 15.00 for food, that equates to four to nine hundred pounds of add-on cost. * Is it worth the possibility of being side-stepped for advancement or wage increases while you’re training. * Raising questions in the presence of other class-mates can make us feel nervous. Ever avoided asking a question because you didn’t want to appear stupid? * For students working away from home occasionally, you face the added difficulty that events can often become difficult to get to – unfortunately however, they’ve been paid for in advance. It really does make more sense to be taught at your convenience – not your training provider’s – and exploit videos of instructors with interactive virtual-lab’s. Any time you get a problem, logon to the 24×7 support facility (that should come with any technical program.) Keep in mind, if your PC is a notebook PC, you could study in breaks at work. It doesn’t matter how regularly you would like to re-take a quiz or test, on-screen instructors are never going to run out of patience! Also, because of this, you can say goodbye to note-taking. It’s already there for you. The final result: Reduced stress and hassle, saved money, and absolutely no travelling.

As far as job titles go, ‘Historian of the Future’ is an absolutely doozy. However, as one of the leading practitioners of this fascinating trade, Dr James Bellini, can testify, the description can lead to a few misunderstandings: he is most definitely not, for instance, a magician.

“Let me be clear: I don’t have a cloak, a pointy hat and a magic wand,” Bellini jokes – and he absolutely can’t tell you who’s going to win the 3.30 at Ascot. What he can do, however, is draw upon a career spanning decades of research and analysis, networking and award-winning creative endeavours to produce assessments of the likely state of the future which are as informed, and as entertaining, as any you’ll encounter.

When SSON meets Bellini, the good doctor – whose PhD “in military stuff” came from the London School of Economics – has just finished presenting to the 8th Annual Shared Services Week in Sitges, near Barcelona. His talk – the first plenary of the event – has ranged from early corporate history, via demographic change in modern Europe, through ‘Gutenberg 2.0’, to the rise of a new wave of consumers and the hiring challenges posed by the emergence of ‘Generation C’– and he’s scattered some pretty brain-bending statistics along the way.

For example, those of us in the audience now know that by 2040, if current trends are maintained, Italy will have 20 million fewer inhabitants; that “in 1965 there were 10,000 people for every computer, but by 2015 there will be 10,000 connected devices for every person”; that “over 50 per cent of people on the planet have never made a phone call”; that by 2020 Japan will be the oldest society in the developed world, and the USA will be the youngest.

It’s from a vast archive of such data, analysed through methods many years in the perfecting, that Bellini is able to create the “works of informed imagination” that make up his futurological output. Facts and figures, he says, are the currency of futurology and he declares that, magpie-like, he “will steal anything without remorse” which will contribute to his understanding of the myriad forces shaping the times to come.

This understanding has developed over the course of a distinguished and varied career which has seen Bellini finding success as an academic, a think-tank analyst, a reporter and TV presenter, an author, a narrator and, of course, a public speaker. If, however, this suggests chameleonic professional tendencies to accompany his corvine approach to data, Bellini’s wry grin, penetrating stare and uncompromising wit mark him out as resolutely human – as does his unwillingness to pander to social niceties: his latest book, tackling corporate deceit and the pervasiveness of misrepresentation in the business world, is appropriately titled The Bullshit Factor.

Bellini moved from university (St John’s College, Cambridge) into advertising, among other roles – but it was in Paris as the first British member of the highly regarded Hudson Institute (co-founded by Bellini’s early mentor, nuclear strategist Herman Kahn) where he won his spurs, and plaudits, with a series of predictions for major European economies, starting with France. He and his colleagues were a long way ahead of the curve in foreseeing the French economic revival of the 1970s and ‘80s, and their success did not go unnoticed; brought in by the BBC as a consultant on a similar predictive piece about the British economy, Bellini ended up fronting the program as lead reporter. Perhaps unpredictably – even for this most promising of seers – television, and a modicum of fame, had come knocking.

Although he discusses his successes with disarming humility, Bellini’s career in television left him much to crow about: seven years as a studio presenter with Sky News and Financial Times Television; stints presenting Panorama, Newsnight and The Money Programme; and a host of awards including the Prince Rainier II Prize at the Monte Carlo International TV festival and a special award given by the United Nations for his work on the epic documentary series The Nuclear Age – as well as rather less glittering roles such as presenting a TV version of Cluedo. Meanwhile he continued to predict, to analyse – and to publish, with a series of well-received tomes reaching the shelves from the 1980s onwards.

By now Bellini had established a reputation as one of the most perceptive and intuitive pundits on the current affairs circuit, and the step to public speaking to compliment his flourishing literary career was a logical one. His natural flair for business (he has served in executive positions for numerous companies) and for communications, combined with his specific spheres of interest, mean that – although he’s just as happy to present to the likes of Greenpeace “for a cup of tea”- his natural constituency consists of relatively high-powered businessfolk with a vested interest in understanding the foundations of the future (exactly the kind of people attending Shared Services Week, in fact).

And some future it’ll be. Bellini paints a fascinating picture of societies, businesses and economies on the brink of truly fundamental change; while he maintains that in general “nothing is ever really new – it might be different, but it’s not new”, at the same time he posits developments which, in terms of the way organisations are structured and run, are as new as anything which has preceded them since the Stone Age.

“Shared services is not the sexiest area of management, but it’s one of the most important. It is about creating things which haven’t been seen before in business history: internally profit-driven services. This is not, however, truly revolutionary: yet in the next 10-15 years I do see a revolution, a period comparable with the beginning of corporate history,” he says. “We’ll see as much change [in organisational structure] in the next 15 years as we saw in the last 5,000.”

A major facilitator for this restructuring is, of course, the globalising information revolution, which is occurring at a mind-boggling rate.

“The pace of change is becoming a lot more compressed… Moore’s Law is probably already out of date. We have to generate new words to deal with the rate at which information is growing,” he says, citing as an example the rise of the “exabyte” – one billion billion bytes or, in more antique terms, one trillion big books full of data.

The implications for business of this staggering acceleration of development are, of course, manifold; but Bellini sees one of the most crucial impacts taking place in the field of recruitment and HR, and beyond that in the way business itself is conducted on a personal level.

“The people you employ in future will be very different from those you’ve employed in the past,” he cautions. “Your future talent comes from what some people call Generation Y but I prefer to call Generation C” – the connected, communicating, completely digital creator-generators currently en route to adulthood.

“They are digital natives, very different individuals, living, educated and working in digital spaces. Sharing is instinctive among them… It’s not about being selfish but about cooperating in effective, efficient ways.”

Bellini believes that the arrival of this generation will force employers to reassess age-old practices such as recruitment, interview techniques and training. After all, this is a generation with a decreasing attention span but a marked increase in the ability to multitask and shift from one task to another very quickly; if a trainer begins to lose the attention of his or her trainees, Bellini asks, who will be to blame – the trainees, who have developed in a fast-changing, rapid-fire digital environment, or the trainer, who has not? The answer is implicit in the question, and Bellini warns that companies expecting their new recruits to bend to an established, ‘old’ modus operandi will find themselves left behind: “the talent war will become more acute,” he says, and it’s a war no company will be able to afford to lose.

The nature of employment itself will also change, the doctor reckons. Long-term contracts in fixed locations will become increasingly obsolete; the future will be made up of task-based employment of “clusters” of employees coming together to address specific needs, offering complementary skills for comparatively short, intense bursts of productivity – often working at distance from homes around the world.

For older employees such a shift might represent a vast challenge and perhaps an assault on traditional comforts such as job security; for the digital natives of Generation C, however, such practices will be second nature – and Bellini uses the example of Hollywood film production, which has been from the off a task-based environment, as how businesses and entire industries can work on a different, and potentially formidable, model.

The future will also bring us a very different consumer class, Bellini promises. Societies are getting older, and the old are becoming more affluent: in the UK, for example, in this “New Age of consumers” over-50s already own over 80 per cent of the nation’s assets, and the country has reached a tipping point when there are more retirees than there are children. Meanwhile family sizes are decreasing, creating a growing deficit in the workforce of the future: we are approaching the “post-kids future”, Bellini says somewhat ominously.

“This has huge consequences for everyone,” he says. “Take R&D: the reason cars are the way they are, with four seats, is because the nuclear family model was the dominant one when car design was at its most dynamic. Four family members required four seats. Now the nuclear family is not the dominant model: what will the layout be of the car of the future? Or take cereal packets: they were sized for a nuclear family. Now that size is no longer appropriate.”

Different needs require different provisions and Bellini urges today’s companies to plan properly for a very different breed of consumer. The older generation – which will live longer than any in human history – will have different high-value requirements which will need to be met; meanwhile, the younger generation will be comparatively less affluent but will have very different needs and will expect those needs to be met in very different ways. Marketing, design, sales: all will have to undergo their own revolutions.

“There is a conversation going on, a huge worldwide conversation. You will not control this conversation, though it will be about you and will impact upon you,” he cautions. Of course, this lack of control might terrify many businesses and practitioners – especially those in shared services for whom maintaining the right level of control over processes is such a fundamental aspect of the job – but it also represents a unique opportunity.

If, as Bellini assures us, the next few years will see us having to “revisit the idea of how to think”, such reengagement with processes and the reasons behind them – driven in no small way by the digital natives making up the next generation of employees – will surely lead to sweeping changes in almost every aspect of doing business. The cost and efficiency savings currently held up as world-class by leading shared service practitioners could pale into insignificance against the benefits – tangible and intangible – brought by new approaches to the very raison d’etre of business and the economy, and by the technological revolution whose ultimate consequences even this most esteemed of futurologists can only ponder from afar.

As your research has brought you here then it’s likely that either you want to get into networking and an MCSE certificate appeals to you, or you’re currently an IT professional and it’s apparent that you need a qualification such as MCSE. When researching training colleges, steer clear of those that compromise their offerings by not providing the latest Microsoft level. Over time, this will mean the student has to pay much more because they’ve been taught from an out-of-date syllabus which will require an up-date almost immediately. A company’s mission statement should primarily be on the best thing for their clients, and they should care greatly about students needs. Studying isn’t just about the certification – the process should be all about assisting you in working on the most suitable route for you. One area often overlooked by people weighing up a particular programme is ‘training segmentation’. Essentially, this is how the program is broken down into parts for drop-shipping to you, which vastly changes what you end up with. The majority of training companies will set up some sort of program spread over 1-3 years, and send out each piece as you complete each section or exam. On the surface this seems reasonable – until you consider the following: With thought, many trainees understand that the trainer’s standard order of study is not what they would prefer. Sometimes, a different order of study is more expedient. Perhaps you don’t make it at the pace they expect? Ideally, you want everything at the start – so you’ll have them all for the future to come back to – at any time you choose. You can also vary the order in which you complete each objective where a more intuitive path can be found. A number of men and women are under the impression that the school and FE college track is still the best way into IT. Why then is commercial certification beginning to overtake it? The IT sector now recognises that for mastery of skill sets for commercial use, proper accreditation from the likes of Microsoft, CompTIA, CISCO and Adobe most often has much more specialised relevance – at a far reduced cost both money and time wise. Typically, the learning just focuses on what’s actually required. It’s slightly more broad than that, but the most important function is always to master the precisely demanded skill-sets (along with a certain amount of crucial background) – without attempting to cover a bit about all sorts of other things (as universities often do). The crux of the matter is this: Accredited IT qualifications give employers exactly what they’re looking for – it says what you do in the title: as an example – I am a ‘Microsoft Certified Professional’ in ‘Planning and Maintaining a Windows 2003 Infrastructure’. So an employer can look at the particular needs they have and which qualifications are needed for the job. Some training providers will provide a useful Job Placement Assistance program, designed to steer you into your first job. At the end of the day it’s not as hard as some people make out to land your first job – as long as you’ve got the necessary skills and qualifications; because there’s still a great need for IT skills in the UK today. However, what is relevant is to have CV and Interview advice and support though; additionally, we would recommend any student to bring their CV up to date the day they start training – don’t put it off until you’ve graduated or passed any exams. A good number of junior support jobs have been bagged by people who are still learning and have yet to take their exams. At least this will get you on your way. The most reliable organisations to help get you placed are usually specialised and independent recruitment consultants. As they’re keen to place you to receive their commission, they have more incentive to get on with it. A good number of students, apparently, are prepared to study their hearts out (for years sometimes), only to give up at the first hurdle when attempting to secure a job. Sell yourself… Make an effort to get in front of employers. Don’t think a job’s just going to jump out in front of you. Usually, trainers will provide mainly work-books and reference manuals. This can be very boring and not really conducive to taking things in. Memory is vastly improved when we use multiple senses – learning experts have been saying this for years now. Courses are now available in the form of CD and DVD ROM’s, where everything is taught on your PC. Video streaming means you can watch instructors demonstrating how something is done, and then have a go at it yourself – in a virtual lab environment. All companies should willingly take you through some examples of the type of training materials they provide. Make sure you encounter videos of instructor-led classes and many interactive sections. Avoiding training that is delivered purely online is generally a good idea. Physical CD or DVD ROM materials are preferable where available, as you need to be able to use them whenever it’s convenient for you – and not be totally reliant on a quality and continuous internet connection. Sometimes, individuals don’t really get what IT is doing for all of us. It’s electrifying, revolutionary, and puts you at the fore-front of developments in technology that will affect us all over the next generation. Technological changes and connections via the internet will dramatically affect our lives over the coming years; overwhelmingly so. The regular IT man or woman across the UK will also get considerably more money than fellow workers in other market sectors. Mean average salaries are hard to beat nationally. It seems there is no easing up for IT sector growth in the United Kingdom. The market is still growing hugely, and we don’t have anywhere near enough qualified skilled IT professionals to fill current job vacancies, so it’s most unlikely that this will change significantly for a good while yet.