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Re: City & Guilds 2359.
lee8 wrote:l have no idea what your on about.:smile:
Trust me the feeling is mutual
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
One way to look at the qualities of a good appliance repairer might be to weight the attributes needed. This could look something like:
the right attitude (25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}),
technical aptitudes (25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}),
relevant knowledge (15{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}) and
experience on the job (35{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}).Without the right attitude and aptitudes, no amount of training or experience will make a good engineer. That is probably what Ken is banging on about.
However, if the attitude and aptitudes are right, the individual will make it their business to pick up the knowledge and experience needed to become a good engineer.
So a qualification can make a good repairer better, but obtaining a qualification does not automatically create an effective repairer.
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
stratfordgirl wrote:Without the right attitude and aptitudes, no amount of training or experience will make a good engineer. That is probably what Ken is banging on about.
That is actually a very good way of putting it.
If you have the aptitude especially you will work it out and no amount of training will get that across or drilled in because, as you allude, if the attitude is set to be resistant to learn or put the effort in then you’ll never be more than a glorified parts fitter at best.
Which is why, on here, you see a lot of the guys that do that as a matter of course struggling to get their heads around how anyone could work any other way. It’s taken me ages to figure that one out because it’s an alien concept to myself and others that you wouldn’t engage your brain and try to learn when you come across something new or a problem you haven’t encountered before.
This is also the reason that the “playing parts bingo” and kicking the problem back for someone else to solve for you just completely baffles me. I just don’t see what that accomplishes other than hacking everyone off and wasting a lot of time and money. In a good many cases, the repairer’s money and time as much as anyone else’s.
To stop that I had a routine.
Every night I’d look at the next day’s calls. I’d see what was what, sort them and see if there was anything new in there, if there was I’d at least punt the model number into CDSL, Qualtex or whatever and see what bits were in it as it gave me a heads up on what it was. If I had the info, I’d look at the parts list and blowout to see what it was. If it was new, I’d look for tech to take with me going empty handed or with no knowledge is just plain dumb IMO.
That cut down my time hugely and took a few minutes at night but, it probably put me back home earlier and, it looks more professional when you actually had a clue what you were looking at.
Although I would say a large part is also about how you handle the customers, especially so with in warranty jobs. The attitude of the customer outside warranty changes quite dramatically in most cases. There is a definite difference there.
K.
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
Qualifications are all well but as we all know this job is about lateral thinking, investigation, memory retention, Psychology, being organised, having the necessary skills to deal with customers, listening, technical information and buckets load of common sense ! When I was trained we had a 1 year course classroom and workshop based, small groups of engineers, some experienced from other manufacturers service operations, people who had never repaired domestic appliances which added up to a interesting cross-section of people. The training was extremely good presented by two experienced trainers, class room work was also followed with practical application. After a year we were sent out with experienced field engineers to work with them for weeks at a time. Eventually we were given our wings and sent out with just a few calls to see how we got on. The training was completed in modules with certificates given showing pass marks. I will say this, no amount of training can prepare you for the real world, sure from a theory aspect you are prepared but then lets throw all the variables in !
As a comparison I once knew a guy who was a Pianist ( huh ? ) he had brilliant passes at all his exams and Bs Hons, and letters after his name. One would conclude that he must have been a brilliant player. Wrong, he knew all the theory inside out a true academic, its just that he was’nt that good when it came to actually playing, how could that be !
Passing exams do not Guarantee anything, this is a interesting subject but I certainly would not be stupid enough to write the skill base off here on UK Whitegoods. I am all for upping my game whenever and however I can and if that were to mean sitting a course and exam and that it would actually make me a better engineer and allow me to earn more money I would go down that route.
My thoughts on this subject is that as a trade we need to be concentrating on getting manufacturers to let information flow to us as to if this will ever happen well thats anyones guess. There will always be good dentists and bad dentists the same being true of service engineers,I cant see a piece of expensive paper changing that !
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
So not many here would advocate there sons or daughters do a qualification for anything.
Intetesting.
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Re: City & Guilds 2359.
Not if it doesn’t hold any value, no, I wouldn’t encourage or advocate it. I’d use my experience to discourage them from wasting their time, effort and money doing something that would likely ultimately prove to be pointless.
Instead I’d encourage them to do something worthwhile instead.
K.
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
City & Guilds 2359 is pretty well pointless toward white goods training anyway…..!
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
we have an engineer with 15 years plus experience and an hnd in electronic engineering .
we also have an apprentice who has 10 months on the job training,
he is able to diagnose problems just as good as the more experienced engineer .
granted he may not be the polished article with regards to customer skills etc – but he can do 95{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of what a fully trained engineer can . all without city guilds etc ,
he probably has had 10 years of college courses all rolled up in 10 months of intense on the job training.
what i think would be good is a basic test that he would need to go get independently regards electrical safety- testing.
he knows his way around insulation testers earth loop , multi meters but it would be good to have an independent certificateim not against learning – but it does need to be industry specific , having been on a few recently ive seen 1st hand how they grow arms and legs and end up wildly of the original intention due to academia trying to make sense of our industry applying their logic and procedures.
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
lee8 wrote:So not many here would advocate there sons or daughters do a qualification for anything.
Intetesting.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2
my daughters £30k,uni fees are going into a house deposit she
can use that, and live in that for life,canufixit
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
We had a fridge systems engineer start with us some years ago.
He was chosen because he had more certificates of training from numerous colleges on refrigeration than Kens had Jack Daniels shots.
Sadly he only lasted 3 months as we got sick of replacing units where he had melted something whilst brazing the pipework.
He was all theory and there was no one better, sadly he wasn’t very practical.
He now teaches at a local college!
My latest guy couldn’t pass a urine test let alone any form of exam, but he was trained by R600 from this site, to do the practical side of fridge systems and is very successful for us employed on our Hoover Candy and Liebherr refrigeration contracts pretty much full time and we have no problems whatsoever.
Certificates and qualifications aren’t the be all and end all, the individuals are more important than the qualification.
Jackal
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
There has to be a start point in any career, l believe l have not once stated a cert on its own is the bees knees, someone read a comment of mine, came to the wrong assumption.
The people i’ve worked with over the past yr have included various backrounds, some concurr comments on here , but the majority does conflict with peeps experience or their comments at least.
People with a recognised qualification performed better than those without.
The plan or part of it is too improve school leavers and young adults through various colleges set up the by govt.
No secret really just change, hopefully most wont find it too scary and weed out the people scared of change, lazy, arrogant or negative. All the traits causing us to become a laughing stock within the service industry.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2Re: City & Guilds 2359.
Squadman wrote:After a year we were sent out with experienced field engineers to work with them for weeks at a time. Eventually we were given our wings and sent out with just a few calls to see how we got on. The training was completed in modules with certificates given showing pass marks.
My training was work based in workshop fixing appliances to a point of total familiarity before going out on the road for a week or two with a senior engineer. All the while the company made money out of my labours. I’ve never heard of a whole years training with “modules” and “certificates” …..wow!
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
Martin wrote:
Squadman wrote:
After a year we were sent out with experienced field engineers to work with them for weeks at a time. Eventually we were given our wings and sent out with just a few calls to see how we got on. The training was completed in modules with certificates given showing pass marks.My training was work based in workshop fixing appliances to a point of total familiarity before going out on the road for a week or two with a senior engineer. All the while the company made money out of my labours. I’ve never heard of a whole years training with “modules” and “certificates” …..wow!
I think what this shows Martin is that there have been and will be a variety of methods which a company large or small will use to train engineers obviously dependent on how much a company allows for training and how they want it performed. The way we were trained is long gone and I do not know of any companies who will take new comers with no experience and provide training them from scratch.
I’ve never heard of a whole years training with “modules” and “certificates” …..wow!
You have now 🙂
Re: City & Guilds 2359.
There is a company currenty sending school leavers on the course l posted a link too.
They will spend many months after with trusted, experienced & qualified engineers and will build a portfolio before being let loose on the public.
They can then continue learning up to level 4 Engineering which will allow them to enter into a management role.
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