- Thread starter Ben88
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The old way was the best trade test, a piece of paper means nothing.
You have got a week to earn your rate if you don't there's the gate.
I did a five year indentured apprenticeship with John Thompson's boiler makers Bilston started at 15, no swanning off to Uni untill 28 then a gap year etc no grant had to earn my own corn.
am I skilled you bet, am I an engineer no. I needed him and he needed me and if you don't know why shame on you.
You have got a week to earn your rate if you don't there's the gate.
I did a five year indentured apprenticeship with John Thompson's boiler makers Bilston started at 15, no swanning off to Uni untill 28 then a gap year etc no grant had to earn my own corn.
am I skilled you bet, am I an engineer no. I needed him and he needed me and if you don't know why shame on you.
Kent
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Which is why many firms won't use agents
Bunch of useless numerics if you ask me- hope you laughed at them and walked out
F.J.
The least I know, the least i am responsible for
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Having spent 4 years as an NVQ assessor I can put hand on heart and say 99% of 'time served' apprentices these days are not 'time served'. Paper only looks good in a filing cabinet when a business wants to tender for work. I would happily take on anyone who has 10-15 years of hands on experience than someone who has been doing it for 3-4 with a freshly printed cert any day. I've just learnt that the hard way with the tosser i've not long sacked. A 25 year old no it all!
Not being biased but someone like my brother who has the will, the drive and the ambition to get on and crack on and do a bloody good job. He could spell fudge with his GCSE results and flitted from one job to another until (he admitted) something clicked and he started working for my dads joinery firm. No quals, just learnt on the job. He got a job on £15 an hour once the recession hit my dad kitting out portacabins. To be fair it was a cushy number for the money but to him he had gone from nothing to £30k a year with no paper work to prove he was capable. He has just been headhunted to be project manager for a security and shutter door company too.
If he had an aptitude for welding he would be working for me but that's another story, he doesn't like getting burnt haha
Not being biased but someone like my brother who has the will, the drive and the ambition to get on and crack on and do a bloody good job. He could spell fudge with his GCSE results and flitted from one job to another until (he admitted) something clicked and he started working for my dads joinery firm. No quals, just learnt on the job. He got a job on £15 an hour once the recession hit my dad kitting out portacabins. To be fair it was a cushy number for the money but to him he had gone from nothing to £30k a year with no paper work to prove he was capable. He has just been headhunted to be project manager for a security and shutter door company too.
If he had an aptitude for welding he would be working for me but that's another story, he doesn't like getting burnt haha
tomsutton529
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Being driven and willing to work will get you a long way. I left college with enough certs to be an IT tech but life didn't work out that way, but i was determined to work hard and get somewhere. I ended up stopping over at my then Girlfriends (now Wife), parents house after a heavy night round town, when I got up and went outside for smoke her dad was doing some work on his car and I got stuck in for the day. after a few months of helping with the odd mechanical job he needed a 2nd man on site to balance some fans and took me along as he knew i would be interested. From that I ended up leaving the job I had at the time to go and work for the father in law's mates company. I get paid well, travel the country, get to see places like Kelloggs, Airbus, Honda, Jaguar landrover, Vauxhall, Incinerator plants with huge turbines and I bloody love it... Not bad for a lad who left college as an IT Tech.. Since I have worked for this company 2 lads have left for not being driven and willing to take on anything and learn new skills.
And there is something we can all agree on. many modern "apprenticeships" last for a year or two, how can you learn any trade in that time?
It starts at school or should do.
Back in the 70's we did Tech drawing, woodwork & metalwork as separate subjects, then on to tech college and or apprenticeships.
Today its D&T dumbed down by successive goverments & idiots, All they get now is 10 weeks of cookery, ten weeks of textiles & ten weeks of resistant materials, two of those subjects used to be called domestic science. Not a lot of time to teach kids any wood or metalwork skills regardless of how good the teacher & technicians are. And it isnt going to get better any time soon.
It starts at school or should do.
Back in the 70's we did Tech drawing, woodwork & metalwork as separate subjects, then on to tech college and or apprenticeships.
Today its D&T dumbed down by successive goverments & idiots, All they get now is 10 weeks of cookery, ten weeks of textiles & ten weeks of resistant materials, two of those subjects used to be called domestic science. Not a lot of time to teach kids any wood or metalwork skills regardless of how good the teacher & technicians are. And it isnt going to get better any time soon.
Tinbasherdan
Bodger in chief
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My apprenticeship was 4 years. But I agree that a lot of "tradesmen" aren't nowadays. I fought to learn to weld, because my foreman and apprentice coordinators didn't believe it was a necessary skill for a sheet metal worker. I won in the end but in a lot of ways I was penalised for kicking up the fuss. There were other apprentices who couldn't fit their backside to a outhouse pot, and yet as long as they did the bare minimum to fill the nvq books they were left alone. As for school, I was thrown out of resistant materials (metal work) for showing the teacher up . The man was useless but looked down his nose at everyone, I had it out with him and ended up get if slung out of the lesson , and into cookery . I think I lasted a week before they realised there was absolutely no point in me being there, so they let me go to the plant hire firm our dad worked for to do some work experience, was grand fun, all manner of repairs and I got to play with all sorts of gear
malcolm
& Clementine the Cat
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I feel training ought to start in school and practical skills ought to be valued just as much as those of doctors or accountants. Skills were more highly valued in the past so training was a higher priority.
In building the lack of skills and understanding mean I need to repair my roof before the scaffolding has even come down
I wonder if there is any way for us to improve things. Nobody else will.
.
In building the lack of skills and understanding mean I need to repair my roof before the scaffolding has even come down
I wonder if there is any way for us to improve things. Nobody else will.
.
ronan
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I agree with you there, everytime i see dave "piggy" cameron on the box he is blathering on about apprenticeships.
ronan
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Malcolm, the chap i bought my milling machine from,made his fortune in the uk going into schools and buying up the lathes, mills and workshop equipment, and selling it on to model makers, guys in sheds and people like us on here. Anything hands on was seen as old hat, fiddling with computers was where it was at.
davidjohnperry
a different breed
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This is interesting I'm what you call one of those jobs worth I guess. I could not get an apprenticeship because I never went to school much I was always working with my dad I tried the local firms at 16 no one wanted me so I did my first part of my life with dad so say from 14 to 25 in the scrap industry I did day release college as a plumber self funded worked 3 years as a commercial plumber/pipefitters mate and now finally working in the firm I wanted to when I was 16 doing structure steel although I'm not in college I'm learning from the old boys and the young'uns how to do it. I've never classed my self as a trades man but I have some understanding and I'm willing to learn I'm never gunna be rich but ill certainly make sure ill always work to keep a roof over me head and keep the wife fed. But I've met ppl from my college courses over the years who got it free and are still not working or trying for something else. If I had my time again pipefitter hands down with welding certs
tomsutton529
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We are looking to take someone and having an apprentice has bee
Doesn't make you a jobsworth, they stick to the rules and give you a hard time for small issues and generally be a PITA.. what you describe sounds like a grafter and wanting to better yourself.
Doesn't make you a jobsworth, they stick to the rules and give you a hard time for small issues and generally be a PITA.. what you describe sounds like a grafter and wanting to better yourself.
davidjohnperry
a different breed
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Always mate although I'm slow at the moment in my current job my welding is alright except for today. My fab work gets better each day just speed is my issue at the moment but ill always work just wish I found an apprenticeship when 16 as a pipefitter would of been so much easier
When i left school i went to college & did a 2 year City & Guilds course in yacht & boatbuilding, i actually had an apprenticeship lined up when i finished but the yards main moulder burnt down so it never happened! I ended up working at a yard up the road with a time served Shipwright for 3 years, he was a miserable sod who hated boats! however he was a good tradesman & taught me how to wield an adz & loads of other useful stuff. The paradox was the few apprenti at the yard i was originally going to were used as slave labour fitting out grp hulls whereas i had one to one tuition in a really broad range of traditional boatbuilding, so in a way i learnt as much if not more than they did. After that i figured i might as well work for myself & learnt on the job, im now 54 & still learning!
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When I did my apprenticeship my mates who went straight onto unskilled work were earning more money until I qualified so the low income years paid off in the end when I went onto a higher rate than them.
The odd thing about maintenance is if you're sitting drinking tea it means you've done your job right and the plant's running fine, management see us as a necessary evil
The odd thing about maintenance is if you're sitting drinking tea it means you've done your job right and the plant's running fine, management see us as a necessary evil
Wedg1e
They call me Mr. Bodge-angles
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Speaking of jobsworths, we just had two guys in a plant near Manchester moving a piece of equipment up one floor. We worked out it'd take two men two days if they had a good run, three if they had problems.
They had problems all right, and every single one of them was down to office wallahs with procedures, clipboards and boxes to tick (e.g. use of a soldering iron IN AN EMPTY CORRIDOR for five minutes? That'll need a hot work permit - two 'managers' a meeting and 3 hours to arrange - to solder three wires to a D-type plug).
So now we'll be billing them for two guys for FIVE days plus overtime and the next time we quote for a job there it'll be jacked right up.
They had problems all right, and every single one of them was down to office wallahs with procedures, clipboards and boxes to tick (e.g. use of a soldering iron IN AN EMPTY CORRIDOR for five minutes? That'll need a hot work permit - two 'managers' a meeting and 3 hours to arrange - to solder three wires to a D-type plug).
So now we'll be billing them for two guys for FIVE days plus overtime and the next time we quote for a job there it'll be jacked right up.
Wedg1e
They call me Mr. Bodge-angles
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The odd thing about maintenance is if you're sitting drinking tea it means you've done your job right and the plant's running fine, management see us as a necessary evil
Lots of factories I've been into over the years, it's a tossup between maintenance and NDT as to which gets the chop when money needs to be saved. I have yet to see an overstaffed, underworked maintenance section - which is why I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.
tomsutton529
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The odd thing about maintenance is if you're sitting drinking tea it means you've done your job right and the plant's running fine, management see us as a necessary evil
Not true when you have 100 motors, gearbox's and bearings to measure and you HAVE to leave site at a certain time and all you keep getting is "yeah yeah, the line is starting in 20mins" and you have been there since 7am and its now 12. From what readings I did take the plant wasn't running fine but I was sat about drinking tea. Management see us as just another contractor who can wait, until they get the bill for a report that says 70% of the plant was offline.
