I am interested in becoming an electrician, whats the best route for this?

[Aegon Spengler]

Thanks. I am still out of the states as of the moment but I will look into IBEW union once I get there.

Right on! Hope you're enjoying your time away too.

Also, IBEW is in Canada as well, and I think Mexico and some places in the Caribbean

 

[TheOneAboveAll3]

In Australia the best way to get an apprenticeship is at your local footy club I reckon, heaps of tradies down there, someone will know someone looking and they can usually vouch for you.

You can do pre-app courses and go to the union but your best bet is to find a tradesman directly looking to put someone on.

Fun fact: I'm an electrical engineer, electricians hate me ha ha

What do you mean by put someone on? Hire them? Also why do they hate you, electricians?

 

[LMP]

Do the apprentices have to have some sort of experience or knowledge of electrician? I have none unfortunately. I did help some guy who came to fix the wiring on a few of my outlets but it was just shutting off the breakers and turning them on.

Depends on the company, but you should be able to find someone willing to hire you to get a foothold in the trade. You will probably need to get an apprenticeship card. This is basically just registering you as a worker with the local governments. Many cities require you to have an apprenticeship card with the city you are working in. Also in some towns the union is very strong and may require you joining them. You will go down and put your name in the books, if work comes up they will give you a call. That may require you traveling. There are also many companies that travel and pay well they are always looking for helpers.

 

[TheOneAboveAll3]

Yeah and no, do you know how to read a tape? How old are you?
If you go to the union they will try and find a place for you if there is work.
In residential you might be able to find someone off of Craigslist who just really needs help and you can get lucky.
But without experience a lot of people look at that like you will cost money, but if you get there and hustle and have a good attitude that’s enough to sell most people on you as a worker.
I would definitely look into getting a book or two to get a handle on the basics and terminology.
Once again though walking off the street with no experience a union is your best bet.

Which books would you consider for someone who has no experience? I am 39. I have no idea what reading a tape entails.

 

[genecop]

7 years working steady for a licensed electrician, then you can test..

 

[Mr. Shickadance]

Which books would you consider for someone who has no experience? I am 39. I have no idea what reading a tape entails.

I meant a tape measure. And books I’m not an electrician (I’m a carpenter) so I couldn’t really give you an honest answer on any specific book, but just a cursory google search seems to have pulled up a bunch of books aimed at the exam you have to take.
But another good start would be your local library.
But I can’t stress enough trying to get in contact with your local IBEW, they seem like your best option if you ask me. And applying to them is gonna be a couple month process anyways, so contacting them now and then reading up and watching what you can will go a long way, and when you go to your orientation if you make it in, hopefully they will give you the option to test into a higher apprenticeship period so that you won’t have to go for four years and make more money to start.

 

[Mr. Shickadance]

What do you mean by put someone on? Hire them? Also why do they hate you, electricians?

All trades hate the engineers who design how things are supposed to go. Most engineers have never worked in the field so the things they ask for sometimes is really annoying

 

[TankAbbott4Eva]

This is true. Our good friend @HockeyBjj is also an electrical engineer, but he agrees with me that electricians are smarter than electrical engineers.

Yep we don't know shit apparently. Though I reckon the smart one is the person with the clipboard writing shit down as opposed to the bloke who has to climb up ladders and scissor lifts running cable. Not so bad when you're young but I'd want my job when I'm 65.

What do you mean by put someone on? Hire them? Also why do they hate you, electricians?

Yeah hire them. And basically electricians hate us because we do the designs and they do the leg work of pulling cables and fitting things off. And we come back and make sure that it all fits the spec (ie nitpick) and get them to fix the mistakes. They think they do all the work and we do fuck all basically.

I remember my first time on a road project they made me reverse a truck next to the equipment sheds. I had to have a few goes, they were all standing around sneering at me. "Oh you can't even reverse a ute hey?" Some interesting times on that job ha ha

 

[Graves The Elder]

good advice is:

don't let adversity short circuit your career
try not to get your wires crossed while pursuing the job
don't get shocked if you're vying for a job with many others
listen to AC/DC a lot

 

[LMP]

Yep we don't know shit apparently. Though I reckon the smart one is the person with the clipboard writing shit down as opposed to the bloke who has to climb up ladders and scissor lifts running cable. Not so bad when you're young but I'd want my job when I'm 65.

Electricians were created because engineers need heros too. It will be a struggle between electricians and electrical engineers until the end of time.

 

[TankAbbott4Eva]

Electricians were created because engineers need heros too. It will be a struggle between electricians and electrical engineers until the end of time.

Yeah mortal enemies that's for sure. Though I'd like the practical skills that the sparkies have, I have some skills but I wouldn't really wire shit up at my own house, that would be handy.

 

[MoparOrNoCar]

Didn't a handful of us try explaining to you how to wire up a ceiling fan or something like that and you came off as half retarded like you didn't even know how to hold a screwdriver?

I could have sworn you posted a thread like that 6 months to a year ago.

 

[MoparOrNoCar]

Yep we don't know shit apparently. Though I reckon the smart one is the person with the clipboard writing shit down as opposed to the bloke who has to climb up ladders and scissor lifts running cable. Not so bad when you're young but I'd want my job when I'm 65.



Yeah hire them. And basically electricians hate us because we do the designs and they do the leg work of pulling cables and fitting things off. And we come back and make sure that it all fits the spec (ie nitpick) and get them to fix the mistakes. They think they do all the work and we do fuck all basically.

I remember my first time on a road project they made me reverse a truck next to the equipment sheds. I had to have a few goes, they were all standing around sneering at me. "Oh you can't even reverse a ute hey?" Some interesting times on that job ha ha

I do communication work and not exactly electrical work (more DC than AC) but we have a massive feud with our engineers as well.

Basically they copy and paste from old jobs that were set up from other sites. So lets say we go to install a rack of radios and antennas.....we drive 2 hours to the site and realize that almost none of the hardware fits because it was copied and pasted from a site that was built completely different. The DC connectors are too small and we cant get the screws through them to attach to the equipment. Then we realize the screws have the wrong threads so they won't thread in anyway. We go to hang the antenna and the mountain hardware is for a different type of tower.

The instructions have us bouncing from building and installing the equipment to getting on the computer and setting things up, then back to building and back to the computer over and over. For no apparent reason. Massive mistakes like "Connect the 1/O ground wire to the positive bus bar" are common. You call them and they say it won't hurt anything because the bus bar is so isolated that it wont cause a short. So wtf is the point of connecting the bus bar if it's isolated? It's because they copied and pasted off of someone else's mistake. Writing up circuit breakers to break the ground instead of the positive. Again, zero reason for it other than to confuse the hell out of everyone.

Then to top it all off, there are 6 jobs that are exactly the same as this one all coming down the line for work for the next couple of months and every single one of them has the exact same problems as the first one did because they never corrected any of the mistakes.

This is why a lot of us hate engineers. It's not about intelligence or penis envy.

 

[TheOneAboveAll3]

Didn't a handful of us try explaining to you how to wire up a ceiling fan or something like that and you came off as half retarded like you didn't even know how to hold a screwdriver?

I could have sworn you posted a thread like that 6 months to a year ago.

WTF? Half retarded? Nice of you to say that..... The problem was that the wiring didnt have the colors to tell which wire was which, they were both black. And yeah I did call up the electrician and he did it. Unfortunately I didnt ask him how he did it since I wanted to leave him alone.

 

[Swoliosis]

Didn't a handful of us try explaining to you how to wire up a ceiling fan or something like that and you came off as half retarded like you didn't even know how to hold a screwdriver?

I could have sworn you posted a thread like that 6 months to a year ago.

 

[Rocco Siffredi]

I have no training it and I read that you can become one by going to a trade school and taking an apprenticeship or just taking an apprenticeship. I am looking at the apprenticeship since the trade school is likely too expensive for me who has no money at the moment. Are there any videos I can watch to get the basics of it? Any info from electricians would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

they usually start you off by having you stick a wet finger in a live electric socket...

 

[LMP]

I do communication work and not exactly electrical work (more DC than AC) but we have a massive feud with our engineers as well.

Basically they copy and paste from old jobs that were set up from other sites. So lets say we go to install a rack of radios and antennas.....we drive 2 hours to the site and realize that almost none of the hardware fits because it was copied and pasted from a site that was built completely different. The DC connectors are too small and we cant get the screws through them to attach to the equipment. Then we realize the screws have the wrong threads so they won't thread in anyway. We go to hang the antenna and the mountain hardware is for a different type of tower.

The instructions have us bouncing from building and installing the equipment to getting on the computer and setting things up, then back to building and back to the computer over and over. For no apparent reason. Massive mistakes like "Connect the 1/O ground wire to the positive bus bar" are common. You call them and they say it won't hurt anything because the bus bar is so isolated that it wont cause a short. So wtf is the point of connecting the bus bar if it's isolated? It's because they copied and pasted off of someone else's mistake. Writing up circuit breakers to break the ground instead of the positive. Again, zero reason for it other than to confuse the hell out of everyone.

Then to top it all off, there are 6 jobs that are exactly the same as this one all coming down the line for work for the next couple of months and every single one of them has the exact same problems as the first one did because they never corrected any of the mistakes.

This is why a lot of us hate engineers. It's not about intelligence or penis envy.

Worker: "Nothing on these prints will work."

Engineer: "Your the Engineer now, make it work"

 

[Bornstarch]

I'm a union tradesman. Find a local union hall and put your name in the list. They give classes there.

 

[Killer Whale]

Does it matter that you dont have any experience at all? Do you apply for this or do you have to know someone to get in?

You need to put in a required number of hours and pay union dues.

 

[Aegon Spengler]

I'm a union tradesman. Find a local union hall and put your name in the list. They give classes there.

I didn’t realize building bear traps for burglars was its own trade!! Neat!