Course/change of career

[triumph955i]

Hi, I am new to the forum.

I am career changing and looking for a training centre in the SW for Domestic Electrical Installer tuition and further tuition to take me on to becoming a fully qualified Electrician.
Can anyone recommend a good company to go with? I am looking at intensive courses rather than college courses. It is a minefield and I don't want to end up choosing the wrong place and realising too late. I would appreciate any help from anyone with experience out there. Thanks

 

[Mark.W]

First of all it is the general consensus that short intensive courses are absolutely useless. Honestly mate you will be wasting your money by going down that route.

In order to be a Qualified Spark you'd need the C&G 2330 L2 and L3 and 17th edition as a minimum. But most importantly you'd need to have oodles of experience. You cannot learn all the tricks of the trade by sitting in a classroom for a week.

I would seriously reconsider any carreer changes at the moment though as theb electrical trade has really dried up and there are many qualified sparks out there with 10+ years experience sitting on the dole.

Good Luck anyway

Mark

 

[Adam W]

Doing a domestic installer crash course will give you the bare minimum of qualifications to be a domestic installer, not a fully qualified electrician. That means once you've joined a competent person scheme you'll have all the bits of paper you need to wire up houses or for some reason the domestic installer courses also seem to include portable appliance testing, I suspect mainly to tick a box. While you may have heard there is a "massive shortage of electricians" (it's actually a shortage of work) there was never a shortage of domestic installers.

As Mark said a short course won't teach you the tricks of the trade; a lot of people who have forked out for the course, bought the van and the kit and gone out on their own, have soon realised the course didn't really teach them anything.

 

[jstephens251]

2330 level 2 then level 3 spread over 3 years. gives you a lot of knowledge if you listen but like everyone mostly says on here it doesn't give you any practical experience! you have to start somewhere though so 2330 is definitely a start

 

[triumph955i]

Hi, thanks for the speedy response from you both.
I worked in an on site technical solutions industry and have some experience from the last 20 years but take your remarks about tricks of the trade on board. There is nothing like learning on the job.
This is something I have looked at in lots of detail. Thanks for the in depth info for the modules needed, I realise I have to take the domestic course first and then the commercial side.
Unfortunately there is not another option for me other than the training that I am looking at having been made redundant some time ago and the line of work I was in is not available to me in the area I now live in.
This is why finding the right course is so important to me. It would be a disaster to choose the wrong company to go to.

 

[ezzzekiel]

now they shot themselves in the foot even further if thats possible - by changing the qualification route and leaving no other option but short courses for adult learners.