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.