Hi Mustachians,
I'm interested in thoughts/advice regarding a career change my husband is considering -- from a community college adjunct to an electrician. Any thoughts from people who have been through the process of becoming an electrician would be very helpful, since we don't know a lot of people "in the trades"!
The skinny:
He's 33, and has been a community college adjunct for 5+ years now (English). He's burned out and sick of making $35,000 ish a year with no possibility of more unless he takes more than a full-time load each quarter, which equals severely diminished quality of life. Besides being burned out on teaching, he hates working more or less alone (he's extremely social), and would like to do something less brain-y and more physical. All his degrees are in the English field, though, which means prospects for jobs that would be more remunerative and still related to his education/experience are pretty minimal/don't sound particularly appealing.
Then, randomly, he happened upon an article in the Angie's List little magazine thing about the lack of apprentice electricians, and how that's causing a hiring problem for electricians. He thought, "I could do that!" (He's quite handy, and has been known to monkey with things of a mechanical nature with great success, but has never done anything like that as a job.)
So... he has done some investigating, and here's what we know:
You can apply to be an apprentice, take an Electrician's Aptitude Test (any detail about what this test entails would be helpful -- he found a few practice questions online but not too much info), have an interview, and then you're ranked and put on a list of potential apprentices for up to two years. As far as we can figure out, then someone can call you up and hire you, and you'll be working alongside an experienced electrician and also doing some course work through the union organization. It seems like the pay as an apprentice starts at $20/hr, and you need to do essentially two years of full-time apprentice work (2000 hours) before you can take the journeyman test. Is that about right?
He's almost done with the application (just waiting on a couple of transcripts), and is waiting to take the Aptitude test (which is administered once a month).
Questions we have:
It's a little unclear if one should be contacting electricians to be taken on as an apprentice with them, or if you just literally wait to be called. He would like to stop teaching at the end of this quarter, if possible, and starting working as an apprentice at the end of June, but has a summer section lined up that he can take if necessary. Any thoughts on the potential timeline of making this switch, or how to get set up in a good apprentice situation, would be so helpful!
It seems like this will be a big lifestyle change for us, one I'm a little nervous about. I'm a CC teacher as well (I was lucky enough to get a full time position, an almost tenured, and love it, so have no plans to change jobs), so we've been able to have school vacations when we're both off, both have fairly flexible daytime schedules, etc. That's worth a ton to me, as I'm someone who doesn't thrive under a strict routine, but he's someone who is much better at schedules. :) Do electricians typically work on a "construction" schedule of approx. 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.? What's the time off situation like? etc. We've been able to do some fun things like go to Peru for three weeks on our current work schedule, and it would be a major bummer if time off were going to be very hard to come by in this field (though a few years of minimal vacation while he's getting established is totally expected).
We live in Seattle, where the economy is recovering nicely (so far). There's tons of commercial building going on, but also a lot of residential construction. He thinks he's most interested in becoming a residential electrician, mostly because he's interested in houses and how they're built, but doesn't know if he should be considering other kinds of electrician-ry as well, like "inside lineman" or "outside lineman" (these require twice the number of hours of apprenticing). Thoughts?
It seems like there are certificates one could get by going through a program through a community college or vocational school, before becoming an apprentice. It's unclear if that's a better route to go, or if just starting and doing coursework while apprenticing is fine, also. Anyone with experience in this? As a teacher now, he could take classes essentially for free, so if this is a good way to go, it would be helpful to know that before he stops teaching entirely.
Are potential employers going to look askance at a work history that's mostly teaching? He's also done some service jobs (Starbucks) and financed his undergrad degree while working at UPS, so there are some other kinds of work experience on his resume, but I can imagine that some people may be skeptical about an English teacher suddenly wanting to become an electrician's apprentice. Any thoughts on mitigating that, or explaining it in the application?
Thanks so much for reading -- any thoughts would be so helpful!