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Qualifications for doing Part Time IT/Repair work - Comptia A+?
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27-03-2011 7:12pm#1
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It depends what path you want to take.. If you are looking to try and find employment these qualifications are a good start and I'd imaging some businesses would require them if you were thinking of starting up on your own. But if you are gonna start a one man job to earn a bit of cash on the side the average home user cares less about these qualifications and will usually be put on to you by a friend or previous customer and once you can fix their problem they won't care (you'll quickly learn too that most won't care HOW it was fixed either!).
A few points if youre thinking of heading down that road, put a value on your time. It's a lot easier when you're buying something to sell on when working out mark up than attaching an hourly value to your work.
Be careful not to become free phone support. People will expect you to talk them through things over the phone and of course won't expect to pay for it.
Oh and google is your friend when you come across a new problem. To be honest having confidence in using a computer and an internet connection and you'll fix most problems
As for the A+ I did it last year. A lot of it is common knowledge (if youre into computing) and a lot of it is tedious number memorising (like how many pins in a DDR2 ram etc..)
Anyway you can always pick up a book on the subject and study it. Then if you feel you would benefit from having the actual cert take the test!
Id highly recommend Mike Myers book http://www.amazon.co.uk/CompTIA-Certification-Seventh-220-701-220-702/dp/0071701338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301253250&sr=8-10 -
It depends what path you want to take.. If you are looking to try and find employment these qualifications are a good start and I'd imaging some businesses would require them if you were thinking of starting up on your own. But if you are gonna start a one man job to earn a bit of cash on the side the average home user cares less about these qualifications and will usually be put on to you by a friend or previous customer and once you can fix their problem they won't care (you'll quickly learn too that most won't care HOW it was fixed either!).
A few points if youre thinking of heading down that road, put a value on your time. It's a lot easier when you're buying something to sell on when working out mark up than attaching an hourly value to your work.
Be careful not to become free phone support. People will expect you to talk them through things over the phone and of course won't expect to pay for it.
Oh and google is your friend when you come across a new problem. To be honest having confidence in using a computer and an internet connection and you'll fix most problems
As for the A+ I did it last year. A lot of it is common knowledge (if youre into computing) and a lot of it is tedious number memorising (like how many pins in a DDR2 ram etc..)
Anyway you can always pick up a book on the subject and study it. Then if you feel you would benefit from having the actual cert take the test!
Id highly recommend Mike Myers book http://www.amazon.co.uk/CompTIA-Certification-Seventh-220-701-220-702/dp/0071701338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301253250&sr=8-1
Thanks for the reply. At the moment, I only intend this to be something on the side, rather than my main means of employment, but you never know how these things turn out! I've been doing computer work for friends/family for 5+ years at this stage, everything I've learned has been down to stuff going wrong with my own computer and having to fix it
I'd like to start advertising a bit now though to try and get some more regular work. I'm not sure what extra "useful" information I would get from A+, but I'd like to have some qualification to state that I have a clue what I'm doing. Or at least I know how to use google
If I do go down this path, I'll definitely set out rates beforehand, at the moment when I'm doing work for people I'm definitely undervaluing my time that goes into it.
That books looks good, I would plan on studying on my own for the exam rather than taking a course, I'd hope to know a good bit of it already.0 -
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