I've often toyed with the idea of getting into IT... at first just in my own time, to win my technophobia. I like maths and I have an admin background, do you have any suggestion on what I could do to get started?
That depends what area of IT you're looking at. If you wanted to start off at the bottom (help desk) you want MS certs. If you want to be all modern and fashionable in the hopes of starting off somewhere better, you can look at cloud certs such as those offered by Amazon for AWS. The latter is more practically useful as well.
The MS ones will spend hours and hours teaching you all about how Active Directory works and are boring as shit and I guarantee you will never actually use most of what they teach you anyway. But all this cloud mambo jumbo is still growing in enterprise and employers love people who can actually make head and tails of it. Personally I find it much more interesting too. Also much easier to practice in your own time since you can just open an AWS account and play around with the free tier. Whereas the MCSA exam prep for instance requires you to have multiple computers so you can install Windows Server on one and link the rest up in a network.
It certainly wouldn't hurt your CV of course to do both.
You can also do Cisco certs to get some more advanced knowledge, but I recommend starting off with the more simple stuff first especially if you don't already have a computing background. Cisco do well respected certs for more specialised areas like network administration and information security.
There are popular certs done by a company called CompTIA which are pretty easy to get but it has a mixed reputation. Some employers go for it, others just don't take them seriously. But possibly worth looking at.
I should say as well that certs basically get you past HR. The actual IT guys value practical skills above all else. If you got a top cert but no practical skills you wouldn't stay in a job long. Conversely if you have no certs, managed to get a job anyway, and did that job really well, you'd have no problems furthering your career.
So being as that's the case, my personal recommendation (take this for what it's worth, just my opinion) is get a basic cert or two, but also learn about the area of IT that interests you in your spare time, regardless of if it's in the exams or not. Have a practical knowledge not just book learning. When you get a job be eager to learn new things. This is a good way to get into a job and stay there and later move up.
I managed to get a job without even a cert, but I have lived and breathed computers since I could talk. For most people I do think certs are a good idea to get your foot in the door and help to get promotions. In fact I might end up doing some in the hopes of being promoted myself.
