its not the best career choice byfar! Having spent 33 years as a technician & spent 5 years at college to HND & trained also in AC & electronics & diesel's all to a high city & guilds standard, dealers & Indy's don't pay what your worth. So many are born again mechanics & think they can fix for less, its hard back breaking & very physical work!
There is an extreme shortage of skilled & knowledgeable techs, but untill the industry & recipients appreciate the difference to a high degree pay will always be dissapointing. I could of trained as a dentist in the time I spent training & earn't a fortune.
I wish you well in a future career. If you think you can be fast clean tidy & are extremley physically fit & can cope with stress it may be for you, but expect at least 10 years to start with, as a learning curve.
Inj Doc
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It's 17 years since I got out of the trade, and only a very bad turn of events would see me dusting off my City and Guilds certificates, and including them on my CV.
There's a fundamental reason why mechanics will never be well paid and well regarded. Most customers are tarts, the majority don't have brand loyalty, even fewer will be loyal to one garage.
Therefore, only small garages can afford to chase the loyal customer, and these businesses will remain size limited because of this approach. The large garages, and large garage groups don't care too much about customer loyalty - they care more [i.e., spend more!] about being in prime, high traffic loacations, using well placed advertising and sponsorship, with the effort taken to keep previous customers being limited to automated mail shots, and if times are hard a temporary telephone campaign.
Once a garage has taken the large scale decision to chase volume, the workshop is given targets to hit in terms of hours of work sold, and value of parts sold, the customer, apart from the split second when he's keying his PIN, is not too important - there'll be another one along in a minute.
In this environment, a mechanic who has wizard like skills, enyclopeadic knowledge, and great fault solving tenacity is not worth anywhere as much as the mechanic who can reliably turn round 5 services with associated friction product sales per day. The service monkey, while working hard and efficiently can be trained to do this work very quickly and cheaply.
Fault diagnosis and repair needs something a little bit more like education, but, in the context of a dealer ship garage is simply not valued enough - if they need it badly enough, they buy it in, by the hour.
So, my advice is - Don't!
If you must, specialise, but think carefully. Specialising in electronics diagnosis requires eye wateringly expensive kit.
If you want to use the same types of skills for better reward, look at industrial plant maintenance, power/gas/telecom maintenance, railway rolling stock maintenance, dock yard maintenance, etc, depending where in the country you are.
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Thanks for all the replies.
I was concerned about the physical nature of the work. I'm quite a slim, unfit bloke.....in fact, I'm well out of shape!
How easy is it to get work with the AA/RAC etc? That's the route I was looking at- I know in the C&G there are roadside assistant units.
On the other hand, I have been offered a place at uni' to study Building Surveying.........I guess you would implore me to folow that?!
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I was concerned about the physical nature of the work. I'm quite a slim unfit bloke.....in fact I'm well out of shape!
If you got a physical job that would soon change - it would hurt for the first few days, then things would improve.
I know this because I'm a terribly out of shape 50 something, and I occasionally get the spanners out.
It took me most of an afternoon just to change a pair of rusty old front struts, and cream crackered doesn't begin to describe how I felt that night.
But a couple of days on and I'm bounding up the stairs two at a time for the first time in a while.
But, as mentioned above, there are better paid ways of earning a living.
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bcd, if you've got a good aptitude for car mechanics and enjoy mechanical work then go for it. The happiest people in their jobs are the ones who love doing the job/work rather than the ones who chase the money and glitz.
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I believe it is better than plumbing electrical work etc. Many of those things can be performed by DIY enthusiasts But very people will dare doing the work of car mechanic.
Hehe, isnt that the truth!
Its not like 240V would kill you is it?
Leccy doesnt take any prisoners and yet people are quite happy to wade in there to save a few bob.
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