Sabine Kelly, marketing and sales manager at ICT at Huntington, who is sponsoring today's Business page, warns of the importance of getting a valid licence to handle a computer.

As computers and computer literacy play an ever-increasing role in today's workplace, it is essential to rely on accredited qualifications when it comes to IT training.

Before you can drive, you need to take a test for a licence, which gives you and others on the road the confidence that you have gained all skills and aptitudes required to let you loose on the road.

The same assurances apply to computer training. It is inadvisable to turn up for a job interview without the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), the licence to drive computers.

You wouldn't know where to start with a three-point turn if you had not been taught how to and had a go by yourself. Equally, you would not be in a position to prepare a set of management accounts for your finance manager if you have never opened a spreadsheet document in your life.

This is where ECDL Accredited Centres can help people to demonstrate their computer skills. The ECDL qualification is already a well recognised training benchmark adopted by the NHS, the MoD, the Bank of England and a number of local authorities.

With it, your employer - or potential boss - can assume that you have reached a standard level of understanding of the key concepts of computing and their applications in the workplace. The ECDL syllabus is broken down into seven modules, each of which must be passed before the ECDL certificate is awarded. The modules are basic concepts of IT, using the computer and managing files, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, presentation and information & communication.

Companies are either being accredited to the ECDL qualification as part of their own IT training, or are approaching one of the 1,400 test centres accredited by the British Computer Society.

Updated: 11:12 Wednesday, July 14, 2004