Be watchful that any exams you're working towards will be recognised by employers and are up-to-date. 'In-house' exams and the certificates they come with are generally useless. From an employer's perspective, only the big-boys like Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco or Adobe (as an example) give enough bang for your buck. Anything less won't make the grade.

Being a part of revolutionary new technology really is electrifying. You become one of a team of people shaping the next few decades. We are really only just starting to comprehend what this change will mean to us. How we interrelate with the rest of the world will be massively affected by technology and the web.

Let's not ignore salaries also - the income on average throughout Britain for the usual man or woman in IT is a lot better than average salaries nationally. It's likely that you'll earn a whole lot more than you'd expect to earn doing other work. Demand for professionally qualified and skilled IT workers is guaranteed for the significant future, due to the ongoing development in IT dependency in commerce and the very large deficiency that we still have.

OK, why might we choose commercial qualifications rather than familiar academic qualifications obtained from schools and Further Education colleges? With university education costs spiralling out of control, plus the industry's increasing awareness that vendor-based training is closer to the mark commercially, there's been a dramatic increase in Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA based training programmes that educate students for considerably less. This is done through honing in on the skills that are really needed (alongside an appropriate level of associated knowledge,) as opposed to spending months and years on the background detail and 'fluff' that degree courses are prone to get tied up in (to fill up a syllabus or course).

Imagine if you were an employer - and you required somebody who had very specific skills. What is easier: Wade your way through reams of different degrees and college qualifications from graduate applicants, asking for course details and which workplace skills they have, or select a specialised number of commercial certifications that precisely match your needs, and then select who you want to interview from that. The interview is then more about the person and how they'll fit in - rather than on the depth of their technical knowledge.

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