a new career in I.T?

[mindbullets]

im currently a shopfitter and am considering a new career in i.t , i cant afford to give up my full time job so what are my options ?

should i do some kind of distance learning course ,which are the best companies to do this with and how much do they cost and how long do they take to complete?

what qualifications will i need to get and what sort of salary could i be earning ?

not even sure which areas i need to get into , im more of a hands on kind of bloke than sitting at a desk all day.

lots of questions i know , but id be very grateful if you can help.

[lady_p_gold]

Well my friend was in a call centre and he just went and bought all the books there are on Java and all the other IT things and he completely taught himself, and also got involved at work solving any pc problem that arose. The other thing would be to join an IT company as a trainee I suppose. Anway my friend now runs his own business, going to people's houses to sort out their problems and also going to small companies who cannot afford their own in house staff - has too much work to handle and also now builds computers too .... it has taken a while but it was well worth it, he earns more in a day than I do in a week ! So I think it would be best to earn while you learn. I remember going on a word processing course years ago and it was totally useless once I got into the real world, having said that it might not be the same with any course you went on of course.

[OBonio]

Bit of a chicken and egg situation really. Qualifications will depend what area you want to go into. But you probably won't know what area you will like most until you've some experience.

The best (in my opinion) long distance learning centre is the Open University. At least you get a real qualification out of them instead of a specialised MS or Novell or Cisco certificate.

Salary... again, depends what area you want to go into. Have a look here for the different areas and what you could expect salary wise :

http://www.reed.co.uk/it/

Hands on type work tends to be in network or system support.

Any more questions, just ask.