[00:00:00] Ben Poulter: So you're 16 years old, you're straight outta school. You need to find a company that will take on an apprentice and do one day a week at college, and then four years later you're qualified. That's the only way to become an electrician or is it toolbox talks for electricians, loading electricians with the tools and the skills they need to reduce stress, gain back time, and earn more.

[00:00:28] Welcome back once again. My name's Ben Polter, your host, and this podcast I think has been long awaited for a lot of listeners. Cause I've been asked so many times, how do I get started to become an electrician? And the thing is, there is a number of different ways to be able to become an electrician with a lot of electricians.

[00:00:48] They say that you need to do a three or a five year apprenticeship, and those guys are convinced that it's the only way to be a good electrician and to get on and actually be successful in the electrical trade. And I'll be honest, I thought the same. I thought that you could only do an apprenticeship.

[00:01:07] That's the only way you're gonna be a fully qualified, decent electrician. All these 10 week courses that some electricians take, uh, a lot of us called them the kell's cornflake qualifications. They weren't worth the paper. The , printed on. But the reason for that is cuz I've met electricians who have done these courses and they were pretty much useless.

[00:01:26] They didn't know anything of how to wire a, a simple lighting circuit. They couldn't do it. They'd learn it, seen it at college, but on site. Who'd you have a clue whether to drop down to the switch or where the switch wire went? , it's hard to think hang about your qualified electrician and you haven't got a clue how to do this.

[00:01:42] I have one subcontractor turn up to a site once and he said I specialize in second fixing well. As an electrician, you'll know that that's the easy part, mate, like everyone can do second fixing. It's the wiring and the con and the containment that proper electricians do. The choices of cable, the choices of containment, even that's what you need to know your stuff when being an electrician.

[00:02:06] So that's where my opinion of all these, like 10 week. 15 weeks, 16 week courses came from. However, after talking to a couple of guys inside of the toolbox, talks for electricians group who have actually built a very successful business as an electrician in the electrical industry. So I found out that, well, I'm, I'm pretty much wrong.

[00:02:27] That's a wrong thing. To think that you have to do a three to five year apprenticeship as a 16 year old snotty little kid. That's not the only way you need to. It is definitely a good route to take being an apprentice for a company and getting the actual onsite experience as you train. Cuz as you may well know, experience is the key factor that makes a good electrician.

[00:02:49] It's a huge advantage being onsite to be able to put into practice what you're actually taught at college. You're not just seen in a book, and I've seen the illustrations of the wiring diagrams. You can see it in real life. You see it on site. , it's a massive advantage. It was for. And an extra bonus.

[00:03:06] If you work as an apprentice, you'll always be working with electrician, so if you're not sure or you do something wrong, I can guarantee you the electrician will go, you're an idiot. You've done it wrong. Or you can ask some questions and say, look mate, how, how does this actually work? Why does the red go there?

[00:03:21] Or red, sorry, that's back in the, back in when I first died, the brown, even the brown line. Why does Brown go there? Why does the neutral go there? What do you use on three core with the three face supply? This is all these questions. That you can ask an electrician because you need to know and you can ask him in real life.

[00:03:39] But unfortunately an apprenticeship, it doesn't pay a lot. When you're 16 year old and you don't have a mortgage or kids to support, it's not such a big deal. The 500 pound a week you get goes on clothes or going out with your mates. But when you're a little bit older, you obviously have responsibilities.

[00:03:55] You've sort of built a life and , you've gotta be earning good money to be able to pay for the trainer, let alone the bills at home. So in the name of. I went to good old Google and I typed in how to become a qualified electrician. Well, the first like ones that popped up were ads at the beginning, the first four, which is pretty surprising cuz , although I know there's plenty of guys out there that wanna become an electrician, I didn't think there was a need for ads on Google to say, Hey, become an electrician.

[00:04:26] So of course I clicked on the. and , I must say I was impressed. It had a very well-built website and had plenty of logos on there, convincing me that this was a good course with the sitting gills qualifications that you can get. Cause obviously they had the logo on there. You can't put a logo on there if you can't actually give sitting gills qualifications.

[00:04:46] Also a thought. But I couldn't find out on this website how much the training will cost, or it didn't explain the qualifications that you actually got to become a qualified electrician. What you need that are recognized in the industry, even on site or your CSCs card or your J I B Gold card. So I had to go a step further and I give him a call.

[00:05:08] It was sort of seven o'clock at night, but I thought, well, I'll leave a message and get someone to call me. But someone answered at seven o'clock at night and after being on the phone for 20 minutes, I realized what was happening. He was a salesman. He was trying to make me sign up for the electrical training course, , with all the questions that I asked.

[00:05:30] He gave me some crazy answers. And has been an electrician. Back in the day when I was younger, I worked on site and they need to see maybe your qualification as an electrician. You need to be registered with a J I B possibly to work on site. So I asked him like, do you get to sit in gill's qualifications?

[00:05:47] He said, no, but they're outdated anyway, and they're not really recognized any longer in the industry. I don't think that's right to start with. And I thought, so I said to him, will I be able to be registered with like NAIT or n I c to sign off work with the qualifications that you give me? He said, well, you can be, but you'll have to lie to 'em and say that you've been an electrician for two years.

[00:06:09] He said, but who's, who's gonna know? So you can just tell 'em that. Well, surely if they , see your qualifications, they'll see where it's dated. You haven't been qualified for two years, does it matter to the N I C or the nap? If you've been how long you've been qualified for, which I think it should, because you need the experience to be like, be able to work in people's houses to be able to sign off this work.

[00:06:31] In Part P, all he was giving me was a basic sales pitch. It was slightly in every of other course out there as well, to make sure that I didn't go looking elsewhere. It was even saying that Jtl was a bad company to go with. Well, that's who I got qualified. 20 years ago, you know, when you're on a call and you, you just feel like he's, it's, it's hard to get rid of this guy.

[00:06:56] It just felt like he's gonna a complete scam. And when he was telling me the price I like, how much will it cost? How much will these costs cost for me to take and to become qualified? And he told me, if you sign up today, they offered a 20% discount. Alright. So it was a bit in, in of an incentive to sign up and give him my money on the dot.

[00:07:19] Now, that night when he was on the phone, so in my eyes, just seems like he must be on a bonus or some sort of commission to get people to sign up to that electrical training course. So I left a bad taste in my mouth, found, well, I hung up, but it makes me realize now. This is why there's so many electricians out there that haven't got a clue what they're doing.

[00:07:40] They've got the qualification, they've got that bit of paper that says, I'm a qualified electrician. But Chucks ick in their hand and say Right fit that they haven't got a clue that maybe I haven't seen that before. So they can't fit it. They can't fit a star Dell or motor. They, they don't understand how dangerous or maybe reverse a motor when, if you're an electrician, you know that you change a couple of phases that will reverse the motor.

[00:08:01] But they maybe don't know this and maybe they've forgot it in the book cause they've never done it before. So experience is key and there's so many people out there that are onsite doing the actual work. They're more than likely leaving. Installation's pretty dangerous. I'm assuming all these guys that become qualified through these sort of 10 week courses, they've fed all these lies of how you can make 35 grand a year easy just doing car chargers.

[00:08:26] Cuz that's , what the guys said on the phone, and I assume you can, but these car chargers, the new ones, they're free face and you need to be a bit experienced to be able to install these, not just the 15 months in the c. And doesn't that make you think now that you know why half these car charges, they don't work around the country, they've all got an out of water sign on them, or you can't use them because they're probably been stalled by some of these guys that have gone on a 16 week course, maybe done loose connections, maybe not tested it right.

[00:08:57] So they've gone faulty after what they can't have been in for more than 24 months, cuz they've only just come around , the electric car charges. , they've only just spiraled outta control in the last two years. So not even that old and they've gone faulty. So my advice to anyone who wants to become an electrician, don't Google it.

[00:09:18] Don't get talked to into sign up to one of these courses and pay over seven grand for the qualifications that may or may not be recognized in the electrical industry. You might not be able to get registered with Part P, which if you can to do domestic work, you need that to be registered with Part P.

[00:09:34] Cause I've got a feeling that you'll probably regret it over time. So after finding out. Courses you don't want to do. I had to find a one that was good. I had to find something so carried on with my research and I phoned at the local college, and again, I couldn't get the prices off the website, so I phoned her up and , his phone call went a lot better, and the lady just gave me all the information that I needed without trying to sell me anything.

[00:10:02] She was telling me that, yes, you have to start off on your level one, which is for complete beginners, which is around a grand, and even when you apply for the course, she said, Depends in what situation you're in. You could possibly get this funded to either get the part of the course paid for or you get it for free, which I thought, well, that's gonna be a massive advantage for maybe some guys that are out of work or they may be working in a low paid job.

[00:10:28] I think you have to earn over a 18 grand a year to be able to qualify. So that was a bonus sort of thing. This other, cause, this other internet courses, they can't offer that. That's not something they can. So then you move on to your level two, which is around 1300 pound, and then level three, which was about 3,200 quid.

[00:10:49] So it goes up every, the more and more advanced you get as an electrician, it costs more to do at each course to level one, level two, and level three. They took around a year to do. But all these causes that you take in, in your local college or the they, the lady that I spoke to, she, she said, yes, you get a sit gills qualification.

[00:11:07] Well, that is what you want. That is what's recognized everywhere. Yes, they might be old, but they're old cause they've been around forever. They're a recognized qualification. So although your local college prob probably didn't, doesn't come up on the first page of Google, it's a good option to give your local college a call and see what they can do with electrical training.

[00:11:28] And the courses, yet they do take around three years and they're not crammed into 15 months, which I think that might be an advantage to you because you'd actually have time to learn and take it all in. And then in addition to learning a college, I think it'd be a huge advantage to get onsite and actually do the work.

[00:11:47] So get a cover letter prepared the details of what you are, put that you're putting yourself through. College yourself to become an electrician and you'd like to work alongside electrician for now to obviously learn more and go to Google and send it. To every single electrical company in your area. You might get a hundred nos.

[00:12:06] No thank you. We're not looking for approvers or we're not looking for laborers or electricians mates. Well, that's all right, because now they've got your letter and your details to be able to call you up when they are. But all you are really looking for is one. Yes. So if someone says Yes, we've got a project at the minute, you can probably help on then yeah, jump at the chance, get on site.

[00:12:25] The best experience for electrician will be actually hands on to get it done. Cause if you sit in a classroom all day and you're reading books, sometimes your mi your mind, it does go numb. But, If you wanna be an electrician, you must be good at have a hands-on experience and a bit of DIY maybe. So when you actually do something, it'll stick in your brain that little bit easier.

[00:12:46] And I think with working onsite, you'll get to be more confident in what you are doing. You're confident with your wiring or the confident with your work, and it'll also help you get more confident with customers. And this will put you in a good position to start your own business in the future. And if you're in that position where you are maybe going through college, you're doing your level one, two, or three and you are looking for work, you're looking for onsite experience, get in contact with me and I'll help you with a cover letter.

[00:13:10] Cuz as I've run electrical business for over 20 years, I could tell you what electrical companies are actually looking for in maybe someone giving them a hand or electricians mate. So you don't need to be 16 year olds and go get an apprenticeship. Sometimes you may not even have to pay for the training yourself.

[00:13:29] So go to your local college and stay away from these internet courses that just sound like they want your money and , they're not really interested in actually helping you become qualified. , they fool you. This jargon, like the things they tell you, he is telling me again as well. Oh, you can do.

[00:13:44] 12 houses a year and a rewire, which is five grand a house. Well ain about mate. Not every house is the same. And what about materials? It just coaxed me in to try to butter me up to think, yeah, this is a good idea. I'll partner with my money today. So obviously I wanted to be speaking to him again the college route.

[00:14:02] Yeah, it does take a little more time, but three years to become a qualified electrician and have it. And understanding how dangerous electricity can be. Well, it might just save your life one. So good luck and until next time.

[00:14:17] Get inside the toolbox, talks for electricians group, and post your experience of what we've talked about today. I'll leave a link to the group in the show notes below. Until next time, we'll see you again.