The aim of this set of notes is to provide some guidance for those students wishing to create a personalized training program, either to gain employment in a discipline different from their present one, or as a return to work after an extended time away from their workplace.

We have placed particular emphasis on the creation of programs for those returning to work after an extended time. In situations where the duties expected of a returning employee may have changed, either because work practices have changed or the circumstances of the employee have changed, perhaps because of some type of disability.

Determine your aims

Your first step in determining a suitable training program for your needs should be to make sure that you understand what it is that you want to achieve i.e. you need to define your aims at the outset. If you are to put together a training package it should lead to a measurable outcome - returning to work, gaining a new job or clearly upgrading your skills in the present job.

Top down and bottom up

We recommend that you adopt a combination of a top down and bottom up approach.

• First find out (in some detail) exactly what the employer (or potential employer) requires of you an employee.

• Then assess 'where you are at' in terms of your own skills and try to objectively match your current skills to the required skills. You need to be open and honest, both with yourself and any potential employer. The aim is to make sure that you can confidently and competently handle tasks involved in holding down the new position.

If there is a mismatch between these two, you need to set up an appropriate training program. This is where Design Cad software training comes in. If you find that part of the missing skill set is a lack of computer skills, we offer a number of courses which can redress the problem.

** Clearly, we cannot help with building skills outside those in the computer field - inter personal skills and so on. **

Computer skills set audit

You must determine as accurately as possible, what the employer expects you to do in the new job, especially as far as the use of computer software is concerned. This is not always easy as it sounds.

Many employers often do not provide detailed job descriptions. Try and get a sample job description.

• If you are trying for a new job in a new industry, it is possible to write to the Human Relations departments of companies you have identified as leaders in the industry and with whom you want employment.

• If you are returning to work for your own company after an extended period of time away and are moving into a new role, make sure that you get a detailed job description.

Take note of the computer skills requirements. Unfortunately many companies do not provide enough detail here. It is not enough for an employer to simply state in the job description "computer skills are required, especially in the operation of the Microsoft Office Suite". This is very common and not at all helpful.

This specification is too vague; there are many programs in the Office suite, each can be operated at different levels. CAD can be operated at many different skills levels (in 3D for example) and Microsoft Project software is a sophisticated application.

Let's take just one example of the problem faced by a potential employee. We will imagine that you had previously worked as an installer of fire protection systems, but now want to work as an estimator for the company and that you were retuning to work after an extended period.

Let's get specific - the job specification

Let's imagine that the specification says "CAD skills with AutoCAD are needed along with an understanding of Microsoft Office suite and project management software". This is a vague specification - let's just focus on one part - Excel is part of the office suite.

Excel software can be used at many different skill levels. It is an easy program to use if all you are simply required to do is enter values in a spreadsheet which someone else has constructed for you. However, our (imaginary) job requires you to work as an estimator. Estimators have to calculate quantities. It is highly likely that you will need to use Excel to build your own spreadsheets as well as use existing ones.

Good preparation for the new job says that you should go back to the company and get much more specific information about the precise use of this particular software tool. We would argue that if you need to build spreadsheets of your own, you will need to know about relative and absolute cell references, inserting formulae into cells, using functions etc.

Skills audit for Microsoft Excel

To illustrate the problem and to help you match your skill set with the job requirement, click here to play a movie which reviews what we might call a basic Excel skill set. It covers those areas of Excel which an estimator might need.

Can you see that matching your skills set to those the employer requires considerable effort.

Our distance learning program

Click here to find out how our program works.

Click here for a list of courses.

Try before you buy

• If you are thinking about enrolling on one of our courses via distance learning, we would like you to try out a "Sample CAD course" - this is a Computer Aided Design course, but it will give you some idea of the quality of our materials,

• Our courses contain many instructional movies and we want to be reassured that your equipment works with the movies that we make to illustrate the use of Excel commands so play at least one of our sample movies embedded in the home page of this web site  (there are many example).

• Make sure that you have a copy of the software that you wish to learn on your computer and establish that it works before ordering a course.

Q. Are these courses delivered "in house" or by external study?

As mentioned, our courses can be taken on a one on one (or small group basis) in our training facility at the University of Adelaide Commerce and Research Precinct, Thebarton, South Australia. We also run courses in Canberra, ACT on a regular basis. Alternatively, courses can be completed via our distance learning program which is supported by email contact between our Excel tutors and students.

In-house courses cost $A750.00 and distance courses cost $A250.00.

Q. Is some form of certification provided?

Yes. We provide all students with a "Certificate of Achievement". A statement that a student has reached a satisfactory standard and completed a competent set of working examples can also be added on request. Click here to view a copy of the certificate.

Q. Do you need a copy of the software program that you wish to learn loaded on your computer?

Yes.

Q. What methods of payment do you offer?

If you take a course as a distance student, on receipt of an official order from your company (a purchase order) or email note from you if you are studying privately, we will ship a CD-ROM (with a personal password to unlock modules in the course) and a set of course notes. An invoice will be included in the package. Payment can be made by direct deposit to our bankers (BankSA). Details of our bank account is included on the invoice.

If you wish to pay by credit card, we use the PayPal system (www.paypal.com). PayPal offers a very secure system for processing payment across the Internet and takes all major credit cards. PayPal acts as an intermediary between you and Design Cad. They will hold your credit card details (not us) and hold payment to us until you notify PayPal that you have received the course materials in good order.

More information on our distance learning program can be found by clicking here. To enrol, click here.