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What do you do when you can’t attend school?
I know some guys are self taught like Fopeano. Depending on the instructor you might have to be self taught.
In almost all my interviews I get three questions
“have you ever worked in the field before?”
“How much experience do you have as a non-professional”
“How far a long are you in school?”It’s almost as if they will take a lof of one, and in some cases a little bit of “I have some school I’m attending, and some professional time as a lube tech”
Many people have told me do school, many have said school is a waste of time. And some have said
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Why can’t you attend school?
I think it comes down to the individual and the instructor. I go to night classes and have gotten a lot out of it. The theory behind how the stuff is working is useful and why you are doing what you are doing is good, it helped me with the electrical tremendiously. The text books, especially the shops books, are great.
It also shows perspective employers you are serious about the craft and are teachable if your grades are good.
There many scholarships, SEMA is running one right now, and grants. You can also get tax deductions for it. I would say if you can’t do school by any means start a job portfolio, something showing you doing backyard work correctly and include it in a resume.
Well I would say finish school but, I have explained myself enough on that.
If you are stopping get a full transcript and your grades for each and every class, lab and in class, along with attendance. Get letters of recommendation from teachers that are signed and dated make copies to give out with your resume keep the originals. Any projects that you did in school or helped out with get pictures of and try and get a teacher to mention what you did specifically in one of those letters of recommendation.
Other stuff along the same lines:
Make a portfolio of all side work you do pics are easiest as you can print them out and bring them with you. Also try to include contact info for the cars if you can. I always ask people if I can use them as a reference in an interview when i do side work. Most people go yeah sure.
Bring in a list of the books you have read. Include a picture of you and all your books (some will care others could care less)Make a proper and accurate as hell resume. This is hands down the most important thing you can do. Hire dates with mm/dd/yyyy for each.
Make an interview info sheet for yourself.:
What you learned at each job and a brief reason why you left and do not bad mouth the other shop. If they ask for details on why you left and it was under bad terms say you do not like bad mouthing other people so you would rather not say. If they keep pushing though I normally explain what happened.Also what your strengths and weaknesses are. How you understand your weakness’ how you work around them and how they can also be strengths at times. Such as – Slow and methodical can be a strength because it causes you to catch simple stuff most people over look.
What you are looking for at your place of employment and what you hope to be doing in 3,5, and 10yrs.
Any questions you may have retirement plans, vision, dental, health insurance, short term disability, long term disability, life insurance, dress code, shop equipment, etc.
I’m not quitting school. The exact opposite. My honest concern in getting through school, with very little experience and not finding a job because of lack of experience.
Right now because of personal situations (recently moved to Ohio from Texas) I have one car. And will only have one car for the foreseeable future.
1.) I have school during the day, and wife is a nurse at night. I’m torn between looking for a place that will work with my school schedule, and let me leave an hour early twice a week to take her to work. Taking forever to finish school.
2.) Quiting school because of my engineering background I seem to get parts hanging pretty easy. Get dealership training, and factory cert training. Since most dealerships around here refuse to work with people on schedules, or they are so desperate they will work with you on a schedule till they find some moron from JIffy Lube to replace you as a lube tech they fire you.
3.) School full time, finish in 8 months, engineering degree as my back ground with 3 months exp as a lube tech at a dealership where I was perfect in their eyes. Then apply for jobs at dealerships.
I’m just freaking out, being over 30 I feel like I’m running out of time to keep playing around.
I can hang and bang with anyone. Diag I will take a while to learn but I will learn, So I’m not worried about any of that. My question is what would you guys do.
On a side note, I’ve got this all figured out now. This is for other people maybe facing this situation,
I’ve been working illegally (so to speak, without an apprentice license and cash job) on cars for 3 years. Got my foot in the door of a small independent shop that my uncle frequents, but I found out later they are really just a used car dealer that’s doing work on the side under the table.
I want to, and need to be licensed, my boss keeps telling me that he has friends who are licensed that can sign my paperworks, but nothing has been done. I’ve given the boss my two weeks back in October, but he called my uncle and got the whole family to disapprove of my resignation so now I’m stuck here.
I’ve read up on my options, it’s either go back to school, apply for an apprenticeship license (and start from zero) or get a trades equivalency assessment. Knowing my boss does all of his repair invoices under the table and me getting paid cash to work, I think I’ve lost my TEA option. I’m also a little reluctant to go back to school full time as I need to be working to pay for my tools and other bills I’ve amassed for the career in the last 3 years.
What should I do?
[quote=”abvw” post=130617]I’ve been working illegally (so to speak, without an apprentice license and cash job) on cars for 3 years. Got my foot in the door of a small independent shop that my uncle frequents, but I found out later they are really just a used car dealer that’s doing work on the side under the table.
I want to, and need to be licensed, my boss keeps telling me that he has friends who are licensed that can sign my paperworks, but nothing has been done. I’ve given the boss my two weeks back in October, but he called my uncle and got the whole family to disapprove of my resignation so now I’m stuck here.
I’ve read up on my options, it’s either go back to school, apply for an apprenticeship license (and start from zero) or get a trades equivalency assessment. Knowing my boss does all of his repair invoices under the table and me getting paid cash to work, I think I’ve lost my TEA option. I’m also a little reluctant to go back to school full time as I need to be working to pay for my tools and other bills I’ve amassed for the career in the last 3 years.
What should I do?[/quote]
I have no idea what most of that means, TEA is something I’ve never heard of. Are you from the UK?
Well, for starters, work in a shop as a luber/sweeper and work your way up. Learn from your co-workers. Eventually, you’ll get it.
Fortunately, I’m able to achieve my ASE (Yeah, ASE doesn’t mean much, I know) through community college. I dropped about 21 hundred on schooling. Which is pretty cheap, for hands-on experience. I’m sort of in the same position that you are. I don’t know if you can afford 21 hundred, or not. The only benefit I get from my schooling is that I won’t enter the shop as a luber, and I’m guaranteed a job if I pass the ASE.. However, you could work your way up if you get your foot into the door. & If there are tech’s like me, I wouldn’t mind showing you a thing or two at all. I’ve been in your position before, but through different circumstances.
[quote=”abvw” post=130617]What should I do?[/quote]
Yeah man, what country are you in?
All of us here in the states have virtually no standards whatsoever, let alone needing a license to fix cars. Even if there was such a thing it wouldn’t matter anyway because here, you get a driver’s license without having to demonstrate any knowledge of what an automobile is or how to drive it. You literally have to pass a test that shows you know what most road signs mean and off you go, but I’m digressing.
Shops have to registered to be “legal” here and conspicuously post a state-issued sign that says the repair facility number on it, but that’s the end of it. They can legally hire any random off the street, put a wrench in his hand and pay him to fix your car, while he’s on any drugs you can imagine. That’s a little extreme of an example and not common, but technically it is ‘allowed’ and I’ve seen it happen first hand. Hell, I don’t even have school or credentials. I fell into this business after failing to make good money trying numerous other kind of jobs.
I was a hobbyist already sick of working on my own car, so I packed up my tools and ended the backyard mechanic operation. Had a couple weeks of no luck, driving around in a 86 Golf with the seats gone and replaced with a few crappy overloaded toolboxes. That thing was squatting from the weight and getting rubbish fuel mileage, with me jobless and running out of savings. My persistence paid off quickly and I was fortunate to unload into a Kia dealer back in ’05 at just the right time to take off running. Once I had dealer baptism, all that really mattered in a job interview was that I had worked as a dealer tech. Occasionally I’ve run into an ASE stickler, but it’s not common enough that I felt the need to get certified.
That Kia dealer, I had to really negotiate my way into being given a chance because I had no training/school. After a few years experience, I could answer the trade school question just saying “I’m self-taught” and they say “oh that’s interesting, so you been working…”. At the point I’m at now 10 years in, interviews don’t even ask about school. The work history backs up whatever I’m telling them and they’re fine with that.
The most important thing is you. You need to take care of you. If your Uncle’s shop closed tomorrow what would you be left with? Where would that leave you in 6 months, 6 years?
Could you find work pretty easily?Maybe explaining to your family that you want to work on cars, and be able to advance and take care of yourself if something happened to his shop. If they don’t understand like you’ve stated they haven’t in the past then I would ask myself the stuff I first asked you above.
Just line yourself up to be able to support yourself without the help of family while you are in school. Maybe find a job wrenching part time and school full time or work full time and school part time.
real world is better but school does offer some credentials and shows ‘initiative’. Take a look at Penn Foster’s online career school. I use them; it’s cheap and fits into my schedule. I’m taking both their automotive and heavy duty diesel programs.
i started this thread for this very reason. Not everyone can get, or afford student loans. Some people can’t attend because of schedules. I know Fopeano is basically self taught, knows what books are valuable for self taught people, and recommendations for getting a foot in the door. A lot of the answers to peoples questions seems to be “School or just give up on the field”.
And with the field already shrinking I’m hoping we can help the guys who want to be here.
You don’t need school in order to learn, all you need is the desire to learn. I started off as the shop helper. I cleaned the floors, took out the trash, kept all of the techs oil buckets dumped, shuttled customers home, gave lift help, test drove for techs and all sorts of other stuff. Basically I was doing whatever odd job needed to be done. Eventually I moved up to lube tech and shortly after that they slowly started expanding my role with things like PDI’s and UCI’s. At that point I wanted to learn more but school was not an option for many different reasons. You know what I did? I went out and bought the same exact textbook that the local college used in their technician program. You can read and you want to learn so why let the absence of a teacher and a classroom stop you? If I run across something at work that doesn’t make sense I can look it up that evening and try to learn about it. Conversely if I read some material in the text that I don’t understand usually I can show it to another tech and theyre glad to explain it if they are familiar. In your case I’d be more worried about scheduling because I have never heard of a shop working around someones schedule.
Here is my text: http://www.amazon.com/Automotive-Technology-Approach-Jack-Erjavec/dp/1133612318/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427160691&sr=1-2&keywords=automotive+technologyThe common theme I see, and makes sense is if you can’t attend traditional school, teach yourself. I know of a few guys that couldn’t get student loans, or couldn’t get time off work to attend school. So they taught themselves the trade through books like some guys on here.
Some of the biggest hacks I’ve seen, and loobtechs4life were guys that didn’t keep learning, or try to advance themselves.
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