My brother has been telling me about some new courses that his company are putting him on. He has recently started a new job and they have paid for him to be trained up in all sorts of areas. We were both surprised that they did that as we thought that companies were being hit by the recession and would not be able to afford to train new staff at the moment and would rather take on people who had all of the qualifications that they needed already. However, he explained that they were looking for someone who fitted into the culture of their company and did not mind paying out the money for the right person to get trained. He has been working hard to make sure that he passes all of his exams and has just completed all of the Microsoft training that they wanted him to do. He now has to start some IT security training and then he will have the necessary skills to do his job. He is just hoping that they are impressed by his conscientious attitude and that he will be able to continue to make a good impression when he actually starts doing the job that he was employed to do.