Landing a New Technician Job
If you’ve read along here over the last year, you’ll notice that I have no tolerance for careless and thoughtless management. I’ve tried to show you what to look for in good management and how good management will help you, your family and career. Good management can be your best ally or it can be your worst enemy. When you finally discover that management is not acting in your best interest and you’ve tried through persistent communication to voice your concerns and effect change – and nothing happens – it’s time to find a new owner/manager.
With today’s post I’ll be starting a new category titled: Landing a New Job. I hope to provide tidbits of useful information and advice in order to market yourself in an appealing way to prospective employers. After sitting in the technician hiring chair for over twenty years, I have seen folks present themselves in all types of manners and have a pretty good idea of what works and doesn’t. I’ve had people sit in front of me while applying for a job wearing more metal that pierced their skin than goes into some ductwork systems. I’ve had two different people bring their translators to the interview. And I’ve had more people than you could imagine who should have brought their translators to the interview – and they spoke English.
I am not interested in you just landing a new job. Instead, I would like you to connect with a manager who cares about his coworker’s personal development, education, career and family. There are companies out there that are worth working for. We’ll help you find them. And if you work for one, please don’t hesitate to let us know about them.
Are You Proud to be a Technician?
If you are a contractor owner or manager, it’s probably best that you didn’t read this. If you’ve been reading along here at The Technician Shop, you know that one of our greatest desires is to help you. But today we are going to discuss a cold, harsh reality that you might take the wrong way. Better that you just let this one be. Thanks so much for your understanding.
The idea for The Technician Shop first came to me in 2004 when I began to question, who out there was trying to help technicians with their work, career and education? I ran my idea by a person of whom I had tremendous respect for. This gentleman was a warrior. He crusaded for a professionally, improved contractor world. While he loved contractors, he knew they were a stubborn lot and slow to make changes for the better. So he battled them toe to toe, hammering home his you-need-to-change-viewpoint and the reasons that you did. As a ballplayer, I never hit that many home runs, but my hero was Babe Ruth. As a professional, I didn’t have (and still don’t) what it took to battle contractors, but this guy did and he was my hero. So when he spoke, you can best believe I listened.
He said, “I caution you about asking contractors what they are looking for in Techs, they don’t really know yet. Better to ask Techs what would make being a tech job a proud job to have.”
So, why are you proud to be a technician?
So, Now You Have a Career Plan
That was pretty easy, wasn’t it? Let’s stay with easy…small, easy little steps. Now that you have a plan, you need to actually do something and move forward.
We suggest that you take your one or two sentence career plan and, in addition to writing it in your notebook, paste it into your invoice book and display it somewhere within your truck. You can also tape it inside your tool box.
How you gonna get there? One small step at a time. Lets say you recently graduated from vo-tech school and your plan is to be the top technician in your company. We’ll use the air conditioning business as an example. From a technical standpoint, you need to start with the basics, the refrigeration circuit. In addition to what you learned in school and in the books, you need to know exactly what is going on within a piece of equipment’s refrigeration circuit and how it effects and is effected by all other components.
No matter what industry you are in, you need to start with the basics. Ask your service manager or a senior technician to help you. Always feel free to contact me as well for any type of help.
After research, you’ve found an online, interactive refrigeration circuit class. You can pick up and leave off with this class at anytime. Start off spending five minutes per day in this class. Do this for two weeks. You’ll probably want to spend more time per day, but DO NOT. You are slowly building up a study process that is going to last your lifetime. Don’t worry, you’ll move on from the refrigeration circuit. After two weeks, increase your study time to ten minutes. From there use your own discretion. Within the first six months, do not spend more than one-half hour per day in study. Remember, this is on your own time. You might have company education responsibilities as well and we do not want to overdo it.
If you don’t have the bucks for that online class, get out your textbook and mosey up to an A/C unit. Read a little, hook up your gauges and take temperature readings. Understand how things change in relation to the indoor temperature and outdoor temperature. Make notes and then bounce what you learned off your service manager or senior technician the next day.
Begin with five minutes every day. You are beginning to lay the most solid career foundation known to man. Five minutes each day. You can do this.
Do You Have a Career Plan?
While their intentions are good, some people who are in a position to advise or mentor technicians about their careers, really over complicate things. With the likes of personality assessments, one, three, six and twelve month goals, three, five and ten year goals, educational goals, productivity goals, goals for goals…it can all get very confusing.
Some technicians are in a position to write out a formal career plan that might include some of the above. If so, great. For the rest of us, lets take a small step towards creating a career plan.
For those of you who know or have a pretty good idea of where you want to go and what you want to do:
- Write the statement in your notebook – I want to be ______ or I want to do________
For those of you who are not sure, choose one role or job in your company and plan to specialize in it. You’re not deciding what you want to do the rest of your life. You’re just choosing one role and you’re choosing to specialize in it. The cool thing about this direction is that once you make the effort to specialize and begin to do things to accomplish it, you’ll most certainly get a better feel for what you’d like to do more long term.
- Write the statement in your notebook – I want to______
If you write out one of the two statements suggested above, you’ll have started to design a career plan, and be further along than ninety-five percent of all the other technicians in your industry.
Looking for a Job?
Are you looking for a job? Or maybe you looked for a job in the past. You probably went on the Internet and looked for resources to help find that job. And you probably found a lot of stuff that seemed to be targeted toward office workers. Maybe you got frustrated, whipped up a resume and hit the streets. Guess what. You now are like every other technician looking for a job. You’ve done nothing to separate yourself from the rest of the herd.
So what if the information you find out there appears to be geared for office workers. You can still use a lot of it in your search. The way you dress, research a company, write a resume and cover letter, negotiate for salary – most can be molded and designed for your own needs.
I am going to send you to a site that is loaded with resources. The authors present sensible advice backed by a ton of experience.
One quick note before I do. As someone who hired technicians for over twenty-years, I can tell you that I would recognize, in a New York second, someone who took the time to prepare in an intelligent manner. This person always would have a leg up on the others. Sadly to say however, not many did and not many do. Do you feel like getting a job or do you feel like grazing out in the pasture with the herd?
Excellent site for job seekers: Quintessential Careers
