Totally Free Certification Training

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Make the Right Connections

In addition to providing technical training, certification-focused Web sites also create the opportunity for like-minded individuals to meet and band together in the quest for certification. This is primarily accomplished through message boards and mailing lists. Participants exchange questions and answers to technical problems, as well as share study ideas and chatter both on and off the particular topic. They also share encouragement and camaraderie. All for free.

GroupStudy.com, which helps Cisco Systems certification candidates band together, is an excellent example of a certification study community. The people you meet through this study community and others like it will often be able to point you to additional free resources, only a few additional mouse clicks away.

Free Technical Books

Remember how we mentioned that certification study guides can cost quite a few smackers (not to mention you risk a hernia just pulling them off the shelf)? It so happens there's a decent supply of these on line too. In some cases you'll just find a chapter or two, but in many cases the entire text of numerous technical books is available through your Web browser. At InformIT.com's free library for example, you'll find online versions of books on topics ranging from SQL to PowerBuilder, Informix to Java, and many more. McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing has a "bet@books" site that contains the text of books so new they haven't hit the printing press yet. Many of them cover specific certification programs. There are literally hundreds of free technical books available online. You can find an excellent, searchable database of them at http://hoganbooks.com.

Vendor Goodies

Another place you can find a bountiful supply of free information is through certification vendor Web sites. Certification vendors, especially those that certify on products they sell, want you to get certified in their program. Although they'd prefer to sell you a "for-pay" course, sometimes they put training online - the same quality level other people are paying for - and make it free. Cisco is one example of this. If you go to Cisco's online documentation site you can view an Internetwork Design Guide, Internetworking Technology Overview, and lots of similar material. On occasion, they even give away free technical books when promoting a new product.

Free Training Headquarters

Consider 1001tutorials.com, for example. At this site you'll find links to free training on C++, Oracle, SQL, Solaris, Windows 2000, Linux, and dozens of additional topics. All of the courses can be accessed by anyone who has a recent Web browser installed.

Free Training that Comes with a Job

If you happen to be in the market for looking for intense training to transition into client server, Inter/intranet application development, followed by a paid consulting assignment, be sure to stop by the SetFocus Web site. They will give you three months of full time Visual Basic or Java training at no charge, and in return you let them place you in a nine month paid consulting position. Competition for this program is stiff- they get over 2,000 applications per month and only take 21 people in each track, per training session. If you can get in though, it can be your free ticket to a new IT specialty.

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