From the Trades Room over at the Watercooler is a talk about starting a trade career. Great stories like this:
“When I was a kid I worked part time for a private school doing handyman stuff. The guy I worked with was a retired Electrician. I asked him enough questions to make a sane man crazy, but since he wasn’t sane he not only answered my questions, but put me to work. And I mean work.
On to college. The first summer I got a job at a factory working production. After two weeks a trucker’s strike forced the layoff of all summer help except for Welders and Electricians. Since I knew everything there was to know about electricity, I took the test and aced it. Fortunately for me the foreman knew the difference between testing well and knowing anything. He needed the help, and hired me, and once again I worked!. I got put to work with an old guy installing an automated paint line, and to my shock an horror I discovered that I didn’t know squat.. I bent and threaded miles of conduit, and pulled tens of miles of wire, and fell for every prank they could think of.. The fellow I worked with was quiet and patient, and once I got over myself I managed to learn a lot. The next summer was spent in Maintenance again, followed by a summer in Engineering. The business took a downturn just as was graduating, so the job I was expecting to be there when I graduated fell through, so it was off to work.
The next few years saw seven promotions, three mergers, and a firing – - mine. I had had my fill of trying to make a living as an Engineer, and there was a factory looking for an Electrician / Millwright, so I applied for the job. Once again got the nod based on the fact that I got the highest scores ever on the test. So I went to work, and once again discovered that I didn’t know squat. I replaced a guy who had worked there for 30 years, and guy I was working with had been there 26 years. The electrical side of the business came back quickly, but the mechanical side was a long, hard slog. My mentor went on vacation 90 days after I started, and had the gall to go off and have a stroke. Yep. New guy, green as heck, and stuck on day shift. Sink or swim.
I started that job with every intention of working there for two or three years, and then moving up and on. ‘Been there eighteen years now.
So, what’s the moral of the story? Getting your toe in the door helps, but you’ve got to do the work, and learn the trade. Education has always been my way to get the attention of prospective employers. Others get noticed because they know someone influential who will stick their neck out. Others are just lucky souls, and others work their way up through the ranks.. However it happens, the end result is strictly up to you.”
3 Comments
I got my start in telecommunications by accident, really. My last Navy duty station was for instructor duty, but owing to only being an E-5 at the time, I had to wait for the E-6′s currently assigned to be instructors to move on before I could get a slot teaching maintenance courses for the equipment I was proficient in. In the meantime, I was assigned to Training Support, and worked with a guy who had worked for the phone company before he enlisted. One of his collateral duties became servicing the phones in the building because of his prior experience, and I was told to follow him around and learn a few things, mostly because there wasn’t a whole lot else for me to do. One day, I was holding the wiring punch-down tool and my Division Officer walked by, and asked me to follow him to his office and move his phones around. I couldn’t actually refuse, and had to jump in, sink or swim style. I managed to pull it off. Fortunately, I seem to have a knack for this stuff, and twenty years later, I install and maintain business phone systems with multiple locations and hundred of extensions, along with small three and four extension systems. I love (almost) every minute of it, too.
Heres one I don’t see mentioned much- I decided to join the world’s finest air force after every high school counselor tried to brainwash everyone in Nnglish class that if you weren’t headed to college, then you weren’t headed for success. I tested highest in the mechanical career field, and opted NOT to take a job in that area because they were all “avionics” jobs, and I knew I could never get out of the military and find a job in that area. I decided to change my focus to electrical, and I’ve never looked back. I asked for Myrtle Beach, and got stationed in Alaska, that was close enough I guess. After one term, I got out because military retirement in the post-Reagan era is easy to beat. I’ve had about ten jobs since then in the civilian world because we all know that’s how to climb the money ladder. I would be loyal if the engineer hadn’t answered the following question so honestly. I asked him “If you had a robot to do what I do, you’d buy it right”? His answer was “yes”. I’d like to compare incomes with most of the college success stories I see in the unemployment line right now. Mike Rowe is my hero- actually- America’s hero. We shouldn’t be ashamed to get dirty. The rich can outsource everything in America, but whoever is left here will need help where the rubber meets the road.
Working with the “Old Timer’s”, is the best way to learn anything! Fortunatly, I caught on to this at a very young age. Now I’m turning into the “Old Timer”.