Thinking about apprenticeship, help

bucketybuck

mech123 wrote: »

what are you doing now ? no offence but its not really your place to tell me not to do what i like becuase you did it for a year and dropped out because you didnt like it. i know plenty of mechanics that have lots of nice things. one is just qualified and has a 400+ bhp r34 4 door skyline aswell as his daily driver which is a nice car too. he works in a very small garage and the wages are nothing special.

I guarantee I know a hell of a lot more mechanics than you do.

Toyotafanboi

mech123 wrote: »

what are you doing now ? no offence but its not really your place to tell me not to do what i like becuase you did it for a year and dropped out because you didnt like it. i know plenty of mechanics that have lots of nice things. one is just qualified and has a 400+ bhp r34 4 door skyline aswell as his daily driver which is a nice car too. he works in a very small garage and the wages are nothing special.

Genuine advice has two qualities, it's free and it's never listened to.

Does the guy with the skyline have a mortgage or a kid? Or is he 35 in his parents spare room?

20 years ago, you could probably have got by being a qualified mechanic but the reality is, in 2015 if you ever want to own a house, a new ish car or get married and raise a child and maintain any form of quality of life €25k p/a making a start just won't cut it.

mech123

toyotafan i just rememeberd your doing some sort of architectural thing. if you moved from an apprentice mechanic to that id imagine you never were cut out to be a mechanic ?

mech123

the guy with the skyline is 21 years old. im not here for a lecture from people saying not to become a mechanic. i have my mind made up.

Chemical Byrne

what are you doing now ? no offence but its not really your place to tell me not to do what i like becuase you did it for a year and dropped out because you didnt like it. i know plenty of mechanics that have lots of nice things. one is just qualified and has a 400+ bhp r34 4 door skyline aswell as his daily driver which is a nice car too. he works in a very small garage and the wages are nothing special.

I've no doubt you like it, sure I do too. I like fixing engines and it is a weekend hobby for me fixing up vintage tractors and antique engines. But as a full time job, nope!
So your mate might have a skyline, so what, it's just a car. He might be able to afford it now but at a stretch. What happens in 10 yrs time if he wants to build a house, have a family, take them on holiday, send them to a good school? He'll be unable because the salary he's on now will hit a ceiling, and a low one at that. He'd want to be hoping to meet a very well paid girl. And I can tell you, no professional girl with a bit of self respect would see a mechanic as a "good catch". Guaranteed. What girl working as an accountant or solicitor or architect is going to want to introduce someone with black oil under their nails to their peers or parents?

yeah im sure. the living isnt too bad if you work hard. its a steady job where as a carpenter or builder ? there fcucked if theres a recession. as said i love cars and want to work on them for the rest of my life despite all the bad stuff ive read about being a mechanic coming from all sides of the world.

Here's an exercise. When you go scoping out garages, go ask a mechanic in his 40s or 50s how much he loves his job?
You're hearing bad things about it from all sides because those people have much more life experience than you and have seen and heard it all before. You only see the good parts of it and are looking forward to money in your pocket. What you cannot see now is the limitations it will impose on you because you are not at the life stage where they will affect you yet.

No offence, but when I was in the leaving, the general default mindset was that you go to university. Period. Apprenticships were not encouraged at all, they were considered a fall back for people who, academically, were too thick to get into university. No offence, but that's just the way it was and still is I'm sure.

pablo128

I worked as a mechanic for 11 years and got out of it because the money was ****e. You would get more working in a warehouse.

I would advise looking into panel beating. More money in it.

mech123

are we finished giving me the 'dont become a mechanic' talk yet ? :P

mech123

pablo128 wrote: »

I worked as a mechanic for 11 years and got out of it because the money was ****e. You would get more working in a warehouse.

I would advise looking into panel beating. More money in it.

maybe so but i have no interest in it.

vandriver

That was an intervention.

Toyotafanboi

mech123 wrote: »

toyotafan i just rememeberd your doing some sort of architectural thing. if you moved from an apprentice mechanic to that id imagine you never were cut out to be a mechanic ?

ah i doubt that, dad was a mechanic, so was my grandad. i always wanted to be a mechanic. grew up around cars, had spanners in my hands since i was able to walk, i'm the usual stereotype. i'm an Architectural technician, at the moment i just turn up to places in a van i don't own, take a few measurements, draw a picture and get paid more than i would have ever expected possible for so little work.

i am dead handy around cars imo, can do pretty much anything i need to myself. the only thing i havn't done with my own car was the engine swap and the main reason i didn't do that was because i was stuck for time (i could see it taking a week or so in my shed), so it was much easier to give a guy €300 or whatever it was to do it for me and be absolved of any grief.

that guy on the other hand spent 2 days grappling with every inch of bull**** my celica could throw at him for €300 minus costs.

now, i would have loved to spend a week at it, it sparks my curiosity no end and i love the whole mechanical/ engineering aspect of how everything fits together in a workflow. truly fascinating, if there were money to be made at it, i'd be chasing it up.

it's a great release of a Saturday, head out to the shed and just get lost in whatever i want. i have plenty to be tinkering away with, in the middle of doing a huge overhaul on my starlet turbo, and there's always something needs doing on my daily yamaha celica.

maybe i'm wrong. i could well be. just trying to give you an idea from a lad who always wanted to be a mechanic who is now very happy not being one.

if you do aspire to be a mechanic and accidentally follow through on that, you need to not stop there, aspire to run your own garage, or get into a specialty area, have your own plan to make real money, don't just be a part of somebody elses.

i worked for a supermarket to pay for the degree and my manager in store was a qualified mechanic around 40 years of age, lost his job in the bust and got into retail management. said he can't believe how he's making near twice the money and doing half the work.

mech123

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

if you do aspire to be a mechanic and accidentally follow through on that, you need to not stop there, aspire to run your own garage, or get into a specialty area, have your own plan to make real money, don't just be a part of somebody elses.

the owning your own garage part is what i would be looking towards. :P

Toyotafanboi

mech123 wrote: »

the owning your own garage part is what i would be looking towards. :P

and then how will you ever save the capital for that earning €4-500 a week tops :pac: something will have to give, it may be the mortgage etc etc. now i know not everybody aspires to a mortgage, but renting (as far as i can see) is pretty unsatisfying, giving somebody else half of my earnings to live in their place and if i so much as want to hang a picture on the wall, i have to ask permission and then when i want the washing machine fixed, they wont.

whether it be right or wrong, the amount you of money you can reasonably earn as a qualified mechanic isn't great. i reckon it used to be, if you started your trade in 1990 you could be doing fairly ok now but i just don't think it offers a young man the same opportunities in life today as it would have 20 years ago.

mech123

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

and then how will you ever save the capital for that earning €4-500 a week tops :pac: something will have to give, it may be the mortgage etc etc. now i know not everybody aspires to a mortgage, but renting (as far as i can see) is pretty unsatisfying, giving somebody else half of my earnings to live in their place and if i so much as want to hang a picture on the wall, i have to ask permission and then when i want the washing machine fixed, they wont.

whether it be right or wrong, the amount you of money you can reasonably earn as a qualified mechanic isn't great. i reckon it used to be, if you started your trade in 1990 you could be doing fairly ok now but i just don't think it offers a young man the same opportunities in life today as it would have 20 years ago.

a mechanic abroad in oz or the us make a good wage.. back to the point anyway.

what would be the best option? 1- an independant garage or
2- a dealership

what would be better? 1- car/light vehicle mechanic or
2- a truck mechanic

i was looking at bus eirrean apprenticeships but read up about it and it seems way too much hassle to get it.

pajero12

Your attitude is absolutely shocking,
There's lads here who have actually been through what you have ahead of you and you're writing it all off.

I went on to a site, like you thinking I knew it all, My god I got some shock when I got there, They weren't long cutting me down to size though. I went in there knowing quite a lot about the trade from past work experience, But I was still sweeping the floor for 6 months. In the end, I went to college, got a good degree and now I have a good job.

And as for the 21 year old with the Skyline, He's pulling your leg if you think he's paying for that car without help from somewhere as an apprentice, It'd take a serious lump just to insure it, Not to mention I can't think of a company who would.

But In terms of your original question, Main Dealer probably has a little more job security, But there's a lot to be said for the state apprenticeships like CIE or Ianrod Eireann

Chemical Byrne

Mech123, you're thread is entitled "Thinking about apprenticeship, help". People are here giving of their own time and effort helping you by offering advice. It's a fairly unanimous verdict on here that becoming a mechanic is a bad idea for a young man with potential for better.

Now you are rejecting that help that's been offered because those the advice given isn't what you want to hear.

Ask yourself these questions about your life:
Do you ever want to:
-drive a half decent car?
-have your own home?
-get married & have a family?
-go on the occasional nice holiday with them?
-send kids to a good school/uni?
-retire a bit earlier with some security?

Most of the above will be very very difficult on a mechanic's salary, if not impossible. It's just poorly paid.

To answer your paritcular question, I'd imagine light vehicles would be favourable to trucks and busses. For one, you a lesser chance of being crushed alive or having limbs amputated.

mech123

I DIDNT ASK FOR YOUR OPINION ON WEATHER I SHOULD BE A MECHANIC OR NOT.

all i want is advice and tips on getting one,not criticism for wanting to do what i like.

Chemical Byrne

We have given you 4 pages of tips and advice. But you'd don't want to hear it.

Look mate, everyone who has come on here advising you has been a mechanic or an apprentice at some point and have bowed out of it. We are obviously genuinely interested in cars by nature of being on the Motors forum. We have been the enthusiastic young fella like youself, knew it all etc, been there done that wore the tee shirt. All 4 of us agree that it was a bad decision in our lives and changing careers was a positive move.
We cannot, in good conscience, advise you to go into a career that we know will most likely be a bad idea for you. You might not see it, but we are trying to help you.

Try this. Count up all the people telling you to avoid apprenticship and do something better.
Then count up all the people telling you its a great idea and you should totally do it.
It might make you see what you cannot see.

You cannot see the negatives of this job because they don't/havent affected you.
We have seen those negative things, they affected us and we all decided it was better to get out.

Stop shouting at us. Just read this thread a few times and think about it for a while.

Toyotafanboi

a lot of people say bus eireann offer really good working conditions in fairness, but you do have a lot of hoops to jump through in terms of several rounds of interviews and aptitude tests, practicals etc whereas you could probably walk straight into a small garage and get chatting with the owner for a job.

personally i'd be more inclined to go with cars. i'd say everything in a truck/ bus is heavy as **** and incredibly inaccessible, so unless the money is considerably more it'd be hard to justify the extra wear and tear on yourself, that and the added sense of danger in terms of the subject matter, probably a lot easier to injure/ kill yourself working on a truck. i also get the impression that a lot of HGV mechanics operate from a van, on the road, on call at any time. there's a lot to be said for a nice established work station in a garage where the cars come to you and won't be waking you up at 4am because the might miss the boat to Cherbourg.

you'd get a better/ broader understanding of more makes and models and the overall concepts of your trade in an independent, but the money, conditions and training would probably be ****ter.

you'd get better training, conditions and equipment in a main dealer, but you'l get bored of dealing with the 5 or 6 cars with the same 2 or 3 problems day in day out for years on end.

obviously there will be exceptions, but that would be my opinion.

bucketybuck

mech123 wrote: »

i was looking at bus eirrean apprenticeships but read up about it and it seems way too much hassle to get it.

This is such a red flag that if I connected it to an apprentice looking for a job from me the conversation would end right there.

mech123

bucketybuck wrote: »

This is such a red flag that if I connected it to an apprentice looking for a job from me the conversation would end right there.

seriously its a joke.. they keep you waiting for months doing interviews health checks and aptitude tests as said above, then at the end of it they might no even call/email to say you werent successful. theres a thread on here somewhere and people have the same experiences with them.

mech123

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

a lot of people say bus eireann offer really good working conditions in fairness, but you do have a lot of hoops to jump through in terms of several rounds of interviews and aptitude tests, practicals etc whereas you could probably walk straight into a small garage and get chatting with the owner for a job.

personally i'd be more inclined to go with cars. i'd say everything in a truck/ bus is heavy as **** and incredibly inaccessible, so unless the money is considerably more it'd be hard to justify the extra wear and tear on yourself, that and the added sense of danger in terms of the subject matter, probably a lot easier to injure/ kill yourself working on a truck. i also get the impression that a lot of HGV mechanics operate from a van, on the road, on call at any time. there's a lot to be said for a nice established work station in a garage where the cars come to you and won't be waking you up at 4am because the might miss the boat to Cherbourg.

you'd get a better/ broader understanding of more makes and models and the overall concepts of your trade in an independent, but the money, conditions and training would probably be ****ter.

you'd get better training, conditions and equipment in a main dealer, but you'l get bored of dealing with the 5 or 6 cars with the same 2 or 3 problems day in day out for years on end.

obviously there will be exceptions, but that would be my opinion.

thanks for stopping convincing me not to be a mechanic :P i agree, i think i would prefer cars despite the smaller pay

Toyotafanboi

mech123 wrote: »

seriously its a joke.. they keep you waiting for months doing interviews health checks and aptitude tests as said above, then at the end of it they might no even call/email to say you werent successful. theres a thread on here somewhere and people have the same experiences with them.

but it would be good to apply even if you don't get it.

it could potentially go down well in a future interview (or even on a sparse C.V.) with a smaller firm to say that you made it to round 5 of 6 (or where ever) with CIE and didn't make the final cut.

then at least the interviewer will know you can stick to a long term strategy, and they will know you've already passed a certain amount of mechanical aptitude tests and physical assessments (at someone elses cost ) so you aren't a completely useless dumbass.

i also don't know how it works in the mechanics game, but my missus wen't for a graduate role with "company x" when she finished college, went through months of interviews and assessment days, and just fell short of the final cut (something like 10 people out of 1.5k applicants got chosen).

she was gutted. then the phone rings around a week later, "hello, is that toyotafanbois missus? did you make it to the final assessments with "company x"?, well "company y" would be very interested to meet with you! one quick interview later and she had a similar position with another firm.

mech123

yeah your dead right there i suppose really ..

mech123

@bucketybuck .. what do apprentices wherever you work start off doing ?

Chemical Byrne

What do your parents think of this? Are they not keen for you to submit a CAO application like most of your classmates are doing?

Have you spoken to the careers advisor in school?

mech123

they are happy for me to do it, no they are not. and no. they see it like i do, not everythings about money.

Toyotafanboi

mech123 wrote: »

@bucketybuck .. what do apprentices wherever you work start off doing ?

i don't know if it's the same everywhere, but the first week seemed very exciting, watching over shoulders having a look at jobs being done, maybe holding a spanner or an inspection lamp for someone in the interest of getting a feel for how the garage operated.

it kind of got more mundane from there. never mind washing cars, there was plenty of days you were washing tools, cleaning the lifts, painting the floors. doings runs to the motor factors. i remember doing weeding and stuff too when things were slow. this was good in itself i guess as you learned how the lift worked and how to maintain the compressor and oil tanks and such.

the camaraderie was good in fairness, i once remember being slagged for a week or more for asking the guy in parts for a set of 4 plugs for a V6, even though i definitely didn't, this also lead to me having to go for to collect a long stand and various other ****e, but it was all in good taste.

i was only getting to be able to do a few bits on my own when it came time to leave around a year or so in.

mech123

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

i don't know if it's the same everywhere, but the first week seemed very exciting, watching over shoulders having a look at jobs being done, maybe holding a spanner or an inspection lamp for someone in the interest of getting a feel for how the garage operated.

it kind of got more mundane from there. never mind washing cars, there was plenty of days you were washing tools, cleaning the lifts, painting the floors. doings runs to the motor factors. i remember doing weeding and stuff too when things were slow. this was good in itself i guess as you learned how the lift worked and how to maintain the compressor and oil tanks and such.

the camaraderie was good in fairness, i once remember being slagged for a week or more for asking the guy in parts for a set of 4 plugs for a V6, even though i definitely didn't, this also lead to me having to go for to collect a long stand and various other ****e, but it was all in good taste.

i was only getting to be able to do a few bits on my own when it came time to leave around a year or so in.

how long ago was it when you started that ? and was it a dealer or a independent garage ? im not sure if you told me that already

bucketybuck

mech123 wrote: »

seriously its a joke.. they keep you waiting for months doing interviews health checks and aptitude tests as said above, then at the end of it they might no even call/email to say you werent successful. theres a thread on here somewhere and people have the same experiences with them.

I don't care if its a joke, you just come across as looking for the easy route.

Like I said earlier, I'm far more interested in the character of an apprentice than his current knowledge. We can train them, but they have to be prepared to work first and if there is any reason to think they are going to mess about then we don't want them.

Like I said, somebody who wants to be an apprentice but doesn't want the hassle of really going for it, thats a huge red flag to me. I mean, you asked earlier how to go about getting a apprenticeship, but heres one way that you can do it and you couldn't be bothered, what does that say?

Toyotafanboi

2007/ 08, main dealer. i suppose it taught you to bite tour tongue, in hindsight :P

i look back on it fondly tbh, i was a child really, got some good life lessons in there; and i'd go back for €6-700 a week, not a bother.