Plenty of jobs out there?

[n180]

Hi all,

I'm looking to become an electrician (career change). Looked into various training centres like OLCI, RFTraining, New Career Skills etc. They all claim that there's a massive shortage of electricians at the moment in the UK, that there should be plenty of work for a qualified sparky. But of course they would say that.

I want to hear it form you guys already in the industry (so that I can get some real info instead of a sales pitch), whats the market like these days? Is it easy for you to find work? Is there plenty of it out there? I'm talking about working for a company and/or working for yourself. Or are most electricians leaving the industry due to lack of work, or sitting at home twiddling their thumbs?

 

[grantr37]

for every job going, there are 100 electricians ( fully qualified , time served ) after it. these training centres are, at best, liars. £50,000? forget it. agencies are asking for qualified sparks with 2330, 2382 and 2391 , paying £7 - £9 /hour.

Thats because agencies are now shafting harder and faster than ever before, soft targets are now in abundance and they are chasing all the medium/big jobs to make sure nobody ends up taken on books-in these days, books in = more rights, better chance of pension+ better job security, and it "reads better on the C.V" than agency work (reason given to me for a job rejection once years ago was "agency work doesn't read well on the C.V, and it doesn't look good for us if we take you on") and an agency just needs to text you at 7pm on a Friday to tell you not to come back on Monday,so you get a wasted weekend when you could have been looking on Thursday or earlier when they knew but you didn't...


beep beep...

opens...

scrolls....





from: Agency

UR Pumped, beg for p45,
holiday pay non-existent,
lost UR timesheet so send it
Again, Umbrella fee for
wages is £37.00
BYE


The reason behind not taking on books in as opposed to Agency could possibly be that agency staff might be classed as a "financial liability" /Expenditure on the balance sheets in the same way as Tool Hire can be deducted for tax reasons.....just like renting a digger or a multifunction tester or a scissor lift for the same amount of time......claim for it at the end of each financial period for reductions in tax....that might be part of the appeal,incidentally you will see a lot of job ads just now looking for 2 or 3 "checkable " references, one agency tactic is to get a lot of applicants to give the contact details (or even just the company name) of previous employers and then pester them to see if they are interested in having agency workers, the reasoning behind this is that you have left there so you might need replacing, the agency don't care if your old job was naff and they might be sending somebody to a bad place, they just see the sales pitch and £££, if they really do have a job for you, they will just look at your C.V and start selling you, if you're no use they will just bin you after a week(if customer/company complains on phone etc) and send somebody else to the job as is common agency practice, so most asking for "checkable" references are just digging for new opportunities to sell their middle man services.....
don't tell of your current employer details unless you really trust them either, I have heard of Sparks getting given their jotters (marching orders/pumped/paid off) because an agency has phoned where they currently work and said something along the lines of "we heard so and so is leaving so we thought you would be interested in our services" before the worker has even decided to leave, just because they asked about with the wrong agencies to see what else was out there... classic agency "trawl"

 

[Dave 85]

If you're in a good area and you plan to go self employed, there is still potential to make very decent money IF you can get together enough clients to bring in 50-150 decent jobs a year. I'd only suggest this rout if you have already got good contacts in the building trade and someone who is willing to take you on as a mate for a minimum of 6 months. This route also doesn't require much in the way of qualifications.
If you plan to work for a big company you'll have to spend the next 50 years and several million pounds getting qualified up to year eyelids after which you will be rewarded with a handsome £7 an hour to graft your nuts off all day.

Probably wouldn't bother with the latter at all, and only do the former if you know the right people to get your foot in the door.

 

[Snapester]

Its hard work and you need to put alot of time in chasing work and making links. I have been self employed since 2004 and its only since 2009 i am actually getting some good contacts it takes time.
You only need to go on google and type in electrician to see how many dots pop up in your area! Shortage is far from the truth probably swamped is more like it.
good luck

 

[wellshocked]

Ive nearly finished my nvq level 3 apprenticeship, it has been a nightmare

the only guy who wanted to take me on permenantly (should i say permenant subbie) would only pay me 50 a day max and would text me a 4 in the morning saying he wernt working tmoz cause he been and got sihtfaced that night.

The amount of people who took me on and after 3 weeks i was back down to 2-3 days drove me mad.

a lot of people want you to pay for your own petrol i.e transport too jobs , parking and you always get the ones who want you to buy tools from there account so they can claim the tax back.

I dont want to put anyone off , but unless you get in with a big company , which is hard too find,it is pretty ****.

I got lucky and got on the local college apprenticeship when i was looking to retrain , dont get me wrong, i love what i do now but i would not do it again , i dont know if i have just had a bad experience while i was training

at the moment i am working for a good firm and i have been in constant work for well over 4 months but even they are now cutting back hours ,.

My point just being is that if you want to go self employed then you better get to know the lady at the jobcentre quite well and be prepared to fall out with quite a few employers over money and pay dates.


( sorry to be on a downer , i just wanted him to see how it really it is for a lot of self employed people)

 

[alarm man]

If you're in a good area and you plan to go self employed, there is still potential to make very decent money IF you can get together enough clients to bring in 50-150 decent jobs a year. I'd only suggest this rout if you have already got good contacts in the building trade and someone who is willing to take you on as a mate for a minimum of 6 months. This route also doesn't require much in the way of qualifications.
If you plan to work for a big company you'll have to spend the next 50 years and several million pounds getting qualified up to year eyelids after which you will be rewarded with a handsome £7 an hour to graft your nuts off all day.

Probably wouldn't bother with the latter at all, and only do the former if you know the right people to get your foot in the door.

probably the quote to why the industry is the way it is..

 

[TaffyDuck]

Sounds like I`m lucky then, its not easy but I guess I made good contacts when times were good. Refused to work for dodgy builders etc and cherry picked the quality tradesmen. they are still working and therefore so am I. The difference I see is I`m no longer doing many big jobs just a few days here, a few days there but the Insp/Testing is busy and fire alarm maintanance is steady. Not turning down work anymore but I can keep busy for 5 days a week.

 

[Octopus]

"agencies are asking for qualified sparks with 2330, 2382 and 2391 , paying £7 - £9 /hour."

At that sort of money it would be cheaper to stay at home!

Or working at a Supermarket.

Maybe you should ask the training company "selling" you the course how they substantiate their earnings "claims"??


PLUS when you do your sums allow £5K on top of the fees to start up if you plan to go self employed

 

[n180]

Thanks for the info guys.

Wow, this does not sound pretty at all.

I did a search on google for electrician. There are literally hundreds of little orange dots all around Birmingham. Seems like there's loads of electricians around.

Also did a search for some jobs on jobcentre site as well as other sites. on the jobcentre site there are only 153 jobs available withing 30 miles of my house (look how many electricians there are!) The average pay for a qualified electrician with experience is about £12/13 per hour.

I was thinking of doing it with OLCI because I would get the 2357, after about 12-18 months (with work based experience) which would mean I am a fully qualified (NVQ level 3), but looking at the prospects after qualification (6 grand down and 12 months later) is off putting.

any further advice? I'm really confused as to whether I should go ahead with the course now or not?

 

[oldtimer]

well look at it this way would you let a doctor operate on you if you found that he did a crash course instead of the usuall 7 years of training so yes you can take the courses and yes get the qualifications but you are not going to get the £12-13 per hour if you are lucky a company may take you under their wing and take you on as a sparks mate to get you up to speed or worse an agency will get you and we all know where that goes again I am not putting you off its your shout so make sure this is what you want to do and stick to it but if it is a fad then it is going to cost you a pretty penny so make sure you have the money and DONT borrow the cash or stick it on a credit card for your own peace of mind

 

[OllieNotts]

If you really want to do it then go to college, it has been made clear enough on here the training centres a waste of time and will get you nowhere. Less money and more time at college to let the knowledge you are taught sink in and while you are on the course you can be trying to get work as a mate/trainee/apprentice whatever during the course you'd look a lot more attractive to an employer having got off your arse and gone about the training the right way then doing a teach yourself course from home.
If you don't take the advice offered in this thread then you're 99% certain to fail, if that isn't clear enough for you then good luck but seriously take it and let it sink in.
And that is coming from someone at college doing it the long/right way while I attempt to get work and I am 29. If you want it enough, and are wiling to work hard enough you'll succeed.

 

[Adam W]

How many people do you know who have swanned out of training and been snapped up by a company for a cushy job? Nowadays a lot of companies offer unpaid internships where you basically work yourself half to death to try to impress the company into giving you a full time job, then they can turn round and tell you they don't need you anymore and you're back to square one. When it happens with high profile jobs in broadcasting, politics or the legal profession there is an outcry in the media, while it happens all the time in the electrical game, but nobody really cares about the plight of the 'thickie who can't even get a proper job in an office'.

The alternative is you could do what a lot of people seem to have done and leave college with no experience to set up your own business in competition with all those other dots on the map. You could probably blag your way through a couple of jobs by making stuff up as you go along or even asking on internet forums, work at cost to try to build up a customer base but when you try to raise your prices to a level where you're not losing money hand over fist suddenly all your customers have found a 'better' (cheaper) electrician who will cut more corners to pinch pennies or who has had a bigger redundancy payout so can effectively pay for his experience and to build up his customer base.
After a couple of years when your savings have run out and you realise that competing against all these guys with shiny new vans and redundancy payouts won't pay you a living wage you can jump on the next bandwaon or go back to doing a 'safe' 9 - 5, having left the electrical trade in a worse state than you found it.

.... Or maybe you're better than everyone else and can make a lucrative career out of this unlike the thousands of idiots who tried and failed; after all, the salesman said there was a "massive shortage" and you could "earn up to £50,747", which is a lot of money.

I'm not trying to put anyone off, just a few points to consider.

 

[GLENNSPARK]

Or working at a Supermarket.

Maybe you should ask the training company "selling" you the course how they substantiate their earnings "claims"??


PLUS when you do your sums allow £5K on top of the fees to start up if you plan to go self employed

yes well i think its high time that these training centres claiming that earnings of 50k plus are made to explain/substantiate how they arrive at those figures.....and also how they
claim that theres a shortage of electricians in a depressed market......i suppose this is `buyer beware`...but these are clearly false claims and they should either have to prove how they arrived at these figures......or be made to stop this.........

 

[ipf]

This shortage of electricians baffles me. Contractors and companies are laying people off, wholesalers are dwindling, local government and private budgets for building work have disappeared and as for heavy and light engineering...well we all know about that one.
As a result we have duping d*******s, offering 'hit or miss' qualifications to the clueless, most of whom haven't the slightest chance of landing lucky. At least some have the common sense to ask about the situation before jumping. To those, I will say 'goodluck and make sure you know the facts before you make the decision'.........to the rest........ignorance is bliss but on your head be it. For god sake, this is a trade, leave us be.

 

[piratebillybob]

what you do need to accept before continuing is that you could work very hard for 2-3 years put your heart and soul into it, spend a lot of money on college courses and tools and still not make it. And those 2-3 years and the money will be wasted.

as long as you acknowledge this risk then please carry on.

It isnt too bad when youre in your twenties or late teens because youve still got time to find something else, but for me im in my early thirties the stakes get higher.

I got very close to not getting an apprenticeship. If i didnt get one that would have been 2-3 years and a lot of hard work wasted. And when youre 30+ you cant afford to be wasting years trying career changes that dont work out.

Have you thought about doing a degree in electrical engineering? At least at the end of the 3 years and you find you cant get a job then you at least have an engineering degree which could be used for something else.

If you spend 2-3 years doing the 2330 then you find you cant get an apprenticeship then the 2330 really is useless. And you time is wasted

 

[VoltzElectrical]

yes well i think its high time that these training centres claiming that earnings of 50k plus are made to explain/substantiate how they arrive at those figures.....and also how they
claim that theres a shortage of electricians in a depressed market......i suppose this is `buyer beware`...but these are clearly false claims and they should either have to prove how they arrived at these figures......or be made to stop this.........

They don't have to glen. they add the caveat 'potentially'. This covers their rearhind. Some sparks are on a grand a week so it's fair enough. I've known some mates on that, working on price, but the bubble has burst and companies don't want/ won't allow people to earn that anymore.