How to get a job after Electrical Trade School

The choice to become a career electrician today is an excellent one which offers an extremely interesting work environment in addition to very good financial rewards. 

The path to becoming an Electrician in today’s electrical business is not always an easy one but it is the one we have chosen, and with hard work and perseverance it will work out. There are a variety of ways to get into the field today and so here are a few, and please remember, whichever of these paths you choose, all of them will help you to develop the skills and expertise to realize your goal of becoming a great electrician.

Union Electrician apprenticeship program.

The ideal entry to the industry is to join the local electrician’s union and get into a sponsored apprenticeship program.

These programs are structured and focused and are designed to comprehensively cover the subject material and skills required to produce highly qualified Electricians

Trade School

Another great way to get into the field is to identify a good trade school which offers a thorough introduction to basic electrical theory, and who will also teach some practical skills like how to wire electrical outlets, light switches, some basic wiring circuitry, some motor controls and how to wire a small electrical panel.

Starting as a helper.

Many great Electricians start at the bottom as helpers in Electrical companies and work their way up from there to eventually getting licensed themselves and owning their own companies. The thing to remember is that if you care about the work, and are committed to following through with studying the material then you will succeed. 

Whichever of these paths you choose to make your entry into the electrical field they can all take you to your end goal of becoming a great electrician.

Preparing for a job interview.

The first point of contact between you and a prospective employer is your resume and the employer’s website. Many young electricians often do not realize the importance of putting together a good professional resume. 

Your resume is an extremely important tool, not just to show employers who you are, but also to set you apart from the other candidates applying for the position. Your resume is an opportunity to make a statement about you personally and professionally. It is an effective way of outlining your strengths and telling the employer more about you as a prospective employee and why they should hire you.

Trade School prepared resume’s

Generally as part of the process of helping graduates to prepare for employment after graduation, many trade schools will assist students in the preparation of a word document resume.

As a general rule, your prepared resume is essentially a working template that outlines the skills and knowledge that you have acquired over the duration of the course and it is the job of the student to individualize this resume to better reflect each student’s particular work history and experience.

The school prepared resume will often use a template for the class and will contain standard verbiage to describe the skills the students have learned, and become proficient in over the duration of the course.

This means that the school prepared resume will generally be the same for each student as it relates to the course curriculum which is fine, but there are other aspects of the resume which ideally should be customized and individualized by each separate person.

The very simple act of deviating from the standard script on your school prepared resume will make your application stand out from the rest and will also help to identify you as a person willing to take the initiative that is often required in work situations.

An example of typical Trade School resume language would be,

“To obtain a challenging position in the Electrical Industry utilizing my knowledge and experience while gaining an opportunity for professional growth and advancement.

This is a good and reasonable statement of one’s objective, however, if every graduate of the class has the same stated objective then it may be difficult for you to stand out. For this reason I encourage young aspiring electricians to consider personalizing their objectives within the given framework of the prepared resume.

Some variations of one’s statement of objective might be,

• "To obtain a position in the Electrical industry where I can develop the skills needed to fulfill my ambition of becoming a professional Electrician"

• "To find a home with a great company who will help me reach my career goal of becoming a qualified Electrician and being part of a great team"

• "To secure a position as a team member with a great company doing interesting Electrical work, and to continue working towards my career goal of qualifying as a master Electrician"

• "To obtain a position as an apprentice/trainee with a great company that will help me gain the knowledge, skillset and experience to achieve my goal of becoming a qualified Electrician"

These are just some suggestions that you may or may not want to incorporate into your resume, or you may want to write a whole new objective that better reflects your own personal objectives for choosing the electrical industry as a career choice.

Finally, when you have personalized your resume to best reflect who you are professionally it is also helpful to include a little bit about you personally so that the interviewer sees you as a person and not just another applicant. 

An example of this would be to add something that tells the potential employer a little about you as a person, for example,

In my leisure time when not doing electrical work I like skateboarding, motorcycling or baseball. 

Many companies will have an application portal on their website where you can make an application and upload your resume,

Finding a good company to work with.

The first thing to do when looking for a job is to identify some of the better electrical companies in your area. This can be done by looking online or in local newspapers for good electrical companies in the city and state you live in, or perhaps you may be given some recommendations from your trade schools or employment coordinator before finishing your training. The goal is to find a company with a strong culture of training and staff development who build their own electrical workforce. 

When you identify some good local companies then go to their website and learn a little about them. Many companies will give a description of themselves and the type of work they do on their website as well some lists of their most recent projects. If the company you are applying to has completed a local project then it would help to know a little about that, and to be able to reference it on the interview. Many interviewers will ask why you are applying to them and it would be most helpful to be able to reference that you are aware of some of their projects and would like to work for a company that is doing that type of interesting work. 

Communicating with potential employers

A big part of the job as an electrician is to have good communication skills and a potential employer will be looking for these skills from the very beginning of your interaction with them.

The first part of the process of communication is to carefully read any instructions that you will get from a potential employer.

You will typically be asked to forward your resume and contact information to the company and given a date to come and meet with a company representative for interview.

It is critically important to respond to this in a timely fashion and confirm that you are available and will be showing up for the interview.

Whilst looking for a job it is very important to have a voicemail set up on your cellphone in case an employer calls and you are not available.

Electrical companies looking for staff will frequently call early in the morning so whilst job hunting it is advisable to be up early and available to answer the phone.

It is also a good idea to have a simple email address that is used exclusively for professional purposes and it should be checked daily so that messages from employers don’t get mixed up with junk mail and spam.

Going for interview. 

A typical job interview will take place in a professional environment, usually at the office of the electrical company that you are making the application to join.How you dress for interview may be an individual thing but I have found that it helps to dress appropriate to the job for which you are applying.As a person applying for a job as an electrician I can recommend dressing as you would on the jobsite, which for me was always Chino or Khaki type work pants and a polo shirt.This is appropriate attire for the professional electrician of today.

When going for interview it is advisable to bring a printed copy of your resume to give to the person conducting the interview. It is common for the person conducting the interview to use your printed resume to make interview notes on the back of so bring a crisp clean copy of your resume in a manila folder to leave with the interviewer.

Making a good first impression. 

The first thing to do when meeting the person conducting the interview is to make eye contact and offer a firm handshake. This will show that you have good communication skills, and those will be necessary on every job so it’s always better to exhibit them up front on the interview. 

Interview questions.

When applying for an entry level job in the electrical industry there will not be an expectation that you will be an expert in the field of electrical installations but you should have a good knowledge of the basics which will have been covered in your electrical course. 

After finishing trade school it is advisable to continue to study the course material covered in the duration of the course and continue to refresh and expand your knowledge.

Employers in the electrical field will have knowledge of the things that you have learned during your time in trade school so be prepared to answer questions on topics that will have been covered in trade school.

• You may be asked how to wire a three or four way switch and asked to draw the wiring diagram for this.

• You may be asked some basic cable sizing questions like what size wire is used for general purpose wiring and how many amps is it rated for.

• You should know the current carrying capacity of standard common use wires, that would be #14, #12, #10, #8, #4, #2 wire.
  

• You will be asked about basic circuit breaker sizes that you will have encountered in your trade school wiring projects.

You will be expected to know some basic power calculations from ohms law, like how to convert watts to amps and how to find a missing value when given two others. 

A typical question might be, if I have a microwave oven in my home that’s rated at 1800 watts then how many amps does that device pull when on full load.

To solve this problem we need to use the power triangle and you will be expected to know this formula. 

To use this formula we cover the value that we are looking for and what remains is the solution. In this instance we are looking for the amperage (I) so we cover "I" and what remains is P/V. In all formulas what is below the line is divided into what is above the line so P is divided by V

We already know that the wattage of the device is 1800 watts

We also know that in the United States standard line voltage is 120 volts so to find the missing value we divide 1800 by 120

1800 divided by 120 = 15.

The microwave has a load of 15 amps. 

This is typical of the type of questions that will be asked of a trade school graduate applying for an entry level position in the electrical industry and I will go deeper into questions like this in my article about power equations specifically relating to watts to amps conversions.

In closing the important points to remember are

• Identify some electrical companies that you might like to work for and learn something about them and the projects that they are working on. 

• Make a great resume detailing as much relevant material as is possible and make applications to these companies.

• Dress appropriately for the position that you are applying for. 

• Be well prepared to answer questions relating to all aspects of the curriculum covered in the Trade school course.

• Be familiar with basic power equations and be prepared and able to make simple calculations based on ohms law.

– Dave Dooley