By far the most common certification I have seen requested is A+. A+ is the bread and butter of the computer technician. It covers everything from motherboard design and layout to how to troubleshoot printing. CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, is an independent group that provides certification on a wide range of topics including servers, projects, health IT and more. Their certifications tend to be more on overarching topics and general knowledge than specifics (i.e. complex command line sequences).
A+ is generally recommended as a starting point for certification (Through dumb luck I started with Network+, which focuses more on networking). Many employers require it for entry level, and many others require it of their administrators just to keep them current. You should know that it does require re-certification every 3 years as technology changes. This requirement ruffles some folks feathers, but to me it makes perfect sense. I wouldn't trust a mechanic who didn't prove their abilities to repair my car, why are computes any different? (In many ways they are more valuable, think about how much data lives on computers in our daily lives). Fortunately if you get another "related" (Network+, Security+ or CASP) it will update the expiration date to three years from the most recent certification.
The A+ certification is actually composed of 2 exams, the practical and the theory. You must pass both to become certified. The practical focuses more on troubleshooting and customer care, while the theory portion focuses more on how computers operate and what makes them tick. CompTIA suggests 500 hours of hands on work with computers, although a driven user should be able to handle these exams fairly easily. The more experience you can get hands on with hardware and computers the better.
By far the best resource for this course that I have found is Professor Messer. He has a series of excellent online training videos which go over every aspect of them exam. He will walk you through everything you need to pass the exam. I have found that a combination of note taking (writing every bullet point from every slide of every video) and flash cards (generating flash cards based on my notes) led to my success with this certification (90% on both exams, and not a penny spent on training!... except the flash cards). Of course, if you like you may pay Professor Messer for a downloadable copy and some more excellent stuff.
Overall this certification is a great place to begin, and something that provides a solid foundation to any IT career.
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