Are the biscuits the best thing about IT training?

"Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching," said Oscar Wilde, and you might think most IT contractors believe the quotation as gospel for the amount of training they are prepared to fork out for.

In nearly twenty years as a software development contractor, Robert Wallace has been on only two training courses that he paid for himself, and yet has migrated from programming in assembler, through C and C++ to Java, SQL and UML, as developer, designer and architect. Even the courses he has taken, he thinks, were a waste of money.

"Everybody was banging on about Java certification, so I took the course and got accredited. Then I discovered that only 1% of Java jobs advertised specifically ask for certification. And they weren't offering any additional money."

So how do you work out if a course is worth taking? A thousand pound course might be paid for by securing a contract a week earlier than otherwise, or if you are able to take a team leader role at a premium, but these events seem highly unlikely.

Most courses are too shallow, and not intensive enough, to make one iota of difference to the employability of a contractor, thinks Robert Dorney, SQL developer and designer

"Let's see, in seven hours learning you can retain, say, two hours of information realistically. Not very much of a bang for your buck."

His assertion of two hours retained knowledge is probably very optimistic, in any case. But there is no hope that a week-long course will put you ahead in the job stakes when you are up against experienced contractors; not forgetting that clients pay to get a job done, and even a month of on-the-job experience is preferable.

"At best, a course can give you an overview and a certificate," adds Dorney. "I have never been asked for a certificate, and when faced with a job requiring specialist knowledge, I have generally been asked questions only familiarity can answer."

Ray Murphy, resource manager at recruitment giant Spring IT, believes, however, that going on courses can open opportunity's door.

"If you haven't got the qualification, you are precluded from applying," he says. But there is a ceiling on rates, he adds, so gaining qualification is unlikely to increase the money.

"The only advice we would give is that it [the training] has to be appropriate for the task: a network engineer may feel it worthwhile to become a MCSE; a project manager these days needs Prince or maybe ITIL accreditation. Straight advice is: if you have the funds and are serious about your career, do it."

But perhaps contractors neglect obvious areas of training that might well inflate their bottom line. Moaning about agent cuts and poor rates is common, but not many contractors take a sales course or enrol on negotiation evening classes.

Yet Wallace has done this. "The most useful course I have ever been on, was sales training. Before I turned contractor, I was part sales support, and the job taught me about handling interviewer's objections, asking for the contract when appropriate, and how to deal with the agents. I honestly believe a few days sales training has increased my average rate for years and made interviews far easier. It's been way more help than the technical courses."

For most contractors, training is a jolly taken only when funded by the client. Though this fact doesn't necessarily make the training worthwhile. "In 16 years of contracting I have been on two courses both paid for by the client," says Dorney. "They were interesting and engaging, but ultimately I enjoyed the biscuits the best."

When a spokesman for IT training company QA was asked if the biscuits were the best bit on his courses, he declined to answer. I can only surmise they do not offer chocolate coatings.

William Knight