I have spent 12 years as a marketing professional in the IT sector. After a break and a freelance year, I am about to complete a teaching qualification, but want to get into training rather than teaching. I have some experiences of training, partly as a freelance, and partly job related. How would you advise me to get started?
Judith Budd
4 Responses
Know your Customers
Judith,
My advise for what it’s worth is to make absolutly sure you understand your potential Customers business before you enter into any training need analysis with them. Customers will respect an outsider who takes the time & trouble to find out about their business. This won’t automatically win you work but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Hope it helps.
Put your CV in front of Employers
You could send your CV to commercial training companies. It’s good way to develop your product knowledge and get experience of a range of clients. You could apply direct to companies with in-house training teams (eg. law companies). Also, register your CV with Training Synergy(www.synergygroup.co.uk). Finally, it can be useful to have a vendor recognised qualification. CTT+ is recognised by Microsoft, IBM Lotus, Oracle etc. It costs around £250 to get assessed and take the exam but it’s a one off cost and its the most credible training qualifaction in the IT training field.
Career advice
Hi Judith
Sending your CV to training companies is a start. Our training company works with both freelance and full-time trainers. When we are looking for trainers we look for three things. Firstly they have to be practitioners, having had hands-on practical experience in the fields in which they are training. They have therefore worked “at the sharp end” and are not training from a base of theoretical rather than applied knowledge.
Secondly, they have to be specialists. In other words all of our trainers specialise in their respective fields as opposed to being generalist trainers, who can ‘turn their hand to anything’.
Lastly, they need to be experienced trainers, having built on their practitioner experience to develop their training and communication skills.
Hope this gives you a steer in the right direction. Good luck!
How I got into Full Time IT training
Hello Judith
For whatever value you put on it here,s a personal potted history from me. Prior to leaving the RAF I took up teaching Adult IT Classes at a local college. You can often get in by volunteering to help for free for a term or two. If they think youare good then guess who they will offer their next free slot to. I also sent my CV out to anyone who I thought might have a position I could fill. I got a few freelance jobs from this and got picked up for contract work with the local Regional College teaching IT to some of their Business and Marketing students. Most of these students were mature students on day release from their work. Some of their companies needed IT training and guess who was recommended. Eventually after totally ‘retiring’ from the RAF I applied for advertised positions and from having some experience now, was offered 3 positions in a fortnight. I am now working as a Senior Training Officer with occassional part time work in our Adult Education College. Worked for me and for what its worth one of my interview panel members actually commented on the amount of ‘part time’ work I had and wondered why I was looking for a full time position…..
Regards to you Franck