so i've been joined at the studios by richard gaunt who's come down to see us today for a
couple of things the first thing we want him to do is the challenge wall if you haven't checked
out that video i strongly recommend you do is on our live stream so we'll leave a link in the
description for that and you can see what time you managed to get on the challenge wall there richard
now we get asked a lot on the channel a lot of the comments say to us how do
i become an electrician or how do i retrain to become electrician or how to get into the
electrical industry and that's something you're currently trying to do is that right richard
yeah yeah so taught me through your mindset then you've currently got a job and a family
i'll take it i do yeah hey and how are you going about retraining them uh at the moment
i'm even in college it's a bit more tricky because we have to do a distant learning right
okay for me it's monday and a tuesday evening rough after work so so work full time in the day
yeah you're gonna go to college and doing level two city and Guilds is that correct it is yes
so that that doesn't mean you're an electrician so that's the first thing people will say
can you become an electrician in the evening um from my experience of teaching for 19 years
i would suggest the traditional way of saying i'm an electrician probably not okay so that's the
first thing you'd have to do an apprenticeship you'd have to complete the standards you'd have
to complete a am2 skills test and what people keep calling an nvq which doesn't exist anymore
which is a portfolio however before you turn off i still believe um that the route you're
going is the right one as an adult and can lead to an apprenticeship but certainly can lead to
working in the electrical industry were you made aware of that when you started your training
no no and i will address this one as well what the perspectives the respect just being the
catalog you looked at before you went to college will not say in there at the end of this course
you're going to be a pilot at the end of course you're going to be a a i'm going to say a michelin
star chef or a doctor so it probably didn't say in there you're going to be an electrician
and people don't read that now they go in and speak to lecturer and often the lecturers will
say oh you're coming to be an electrician yeah and that's probably what you heard yeah
you're doing the underpinning knowledge a level two followed by i think you're going on to do
level three which is required to be an electrician and an electrician will train at level three only
under the apprenticeship standards there's no level two for an apprenticeship
so it's not it's not wrong from the college's point of view because if every college in
the country told you you're gonna be electrician a doctor a surgeon a pilot
they'd be sued all over the place wouldn't they because people would be saying well on the
prospective said at the end of this course i'd be a doctor yeah okay as you do your three-week first
aid course yeah that sort of thing so just just to clear that up so you might be thinking now when
you're watching this video poor old richard didn't wasn't aware of that and now gary's going to break
the news to me he's not with electrician but you can transfer those skills certainly into being
in the electrical industry i would suggest now there's nothing stopping you calling yourself
electrician today or doctor or anything a pilot you can call yourself anything you want but
it's it's making sure that you're aware of where that level three can get you to
okay so level two is great but the level three should open some more doors for you yeah so
you're you're another year and a half away from doing your level three yep what are you doing
to prepare yourself when obviously the college stops then so what what's your thinking behind
getting skills away from college uh well at the moment i just need to or i'd like
uh to be able to get on on board with with an employer um and pick up the skills to obviously
it's the skills needed to uh to become a fully fledged qualified electrician yeah now and i've
seen it so the early statement where i said going to college or not won't make you what you can call
yourself electrician you can become one still i've seen adults take on the apprenticeship
route after getting a level two and a level three one or the other in order to move forward
but but it's also there are other opportunities so for instance if you've got some electrical
experience we have to get and i recommend it to everyone that they do even as adults i know call
it work experience it's going out on site because you watch a lot of the vlogging youtubers don't
you that are out there yeah yeah you do you watch them all don't you yeah okay and i get i get phone
calls and messages saying i've watched let's name them chris i've watched nick i've watched
um who else can we say well secret millionaire yeah i've watched these on youtube and it becomes
aspirational does it yeah i mean you you it's quite fun to watch an audience the reality
is a little different so i always recommend you try and get some work experience and we
think we can offer you some experience here don't we doing some work um that we think we
can get you some some experience on but again you've got a job that you're quite secure in at
the moment you've had it a while yes yes yeah and to leave that to go and do something you
haven't tried before might be a bit of a risk so i recommend you do a bit of work experience
let's say you get to get your level three the chances are that you could probably turn that
into and again this is where there'll be loads of comments below something that people will probably
call a domestic installer so somebody who's uh competent enough to work in domestic dwellings
would have to prove that competency through either um inspections from people like nic
napier stroma et cetera and to prove that they're competent within that area now
you've got things yourself i've got to build up the experience to be confident in that area
so that means taking on work and getting work experience and building up your your contacts
yeah and then the latest addition of the wiring regulations and probably a testing course you've
heard of things like the two three nine yeah one or 52 yeah yeah so you're probably gonna have to
collect those as well you do you could go and work for a company with other electrical members in the
team and you could work alongside them as well but it's being able to cause you have a qualified
electrician is the one where you're probably going to need to finish that apprenticeship
route which i probably didn't talk to you about college today no okay breaking news um
so did you think then at the end of level three you could probably go out and call yourself
electrician i did yeah yeah yeah and so i always sort of try and flip it around a little bit if um
if you were laying perhaps i don't know on a surgeon's table or got onto an aeroplane so one or
the other a pilot comes over the tanner and says hello welcome to name the airlines of choice i've
been going to night school for the past three years haven't never really flown one of these
planes in real life but i'm a pilot i'd imagine you'd quickly get your yeah your luggage out
of the overhead compartment when you scurry away likewise if you saw the scalpel coming towards you
and then the doctor said i've actually performed open heart surgery but i've done it in the evening
you can see what once yeah so it's it's it can be done in a different way but i think it needs
like you're aware of you need to build up work experience which is an odd word as an adult to do
same for the younger people build up work experience get your underpinning knowledge
and and perhaps try and get a job which could lead you to fully qualification
but think to yourself maybe i could move into working in an electoral team or working for myself
in a domestic setting if i've got the skills that um the um competence person schemes require yeah
all right okay you're right with that yep y'all asked me some more questions now i've talked for
ages so anything else you want to know for digging around um so you obviously mentioned that uh
you don't become a fully qualified electrician overnight after passing your exams so what do you
need what do you need to then go on to you say you obviously finish your or go to an apprenticeship
is it the am am 1am2 right so am1 doesn't exist anymore used to there was an one when i first
started back in the day it's an am2s now there is an am2e which is an experience route so if
for instance you'd have done these courses say 10 years ago and you'd been thought yourself
was working as an electrician and all of a sudden you think hey i've looked at my qualifications and
actually i can't call myself a qualified electrician because i only did night school
or i went to school um sorry college at 16 and did a couple of qualifications
you can actually take the experience you've gained you can do some additional qualifications and then
you can eventually you have to a portfolio which is what everybody will call an nvq okay it doesn't
really exist anymore it does slightly but not in the forms that we used to remember it has and then
you can go and do a m2e which is the experience root exactly the same as am2s but pieces together
um to become an experienced qualified electrician for the people who've been practicing electricians
but actually weren't electricians and again if you know more details on m2e i've read it once
leave those comments below don't hammer me at this stage just say oh gaz no it's this it's that's the
other so that you know look on net's website about am to e now you can get you can you can
get an apprenticeship tomorrow so if a company took you on you could go back to college one
day a week and do your apprenticeship okay the likelihood is that they'd like to take you on
probably because you're older and a little bit more experienced and life worthy so you're not
likely to perhaps in my younger days i might have drank a few too many drinks on a thursday evening
of the wrong variety fridays were a struggle for me as a younger person i'd imagine as a
as an adult i'd be a little bit better gordon's nodding over there he isn't okay yeah don't see
him on a friday morning so you can do that route but but i've been teaching previous to this for 19
years i probably saw less than 10 people as adults get a fully qualified apprenticeship
so i've probably taught thousands right yeah so it is difficult but i've taught a lot of people
that were butcher baker candlestick maker who changed their jobs from that
and became in the industry with their qualifications at college in the evening
the regulations course the test inspection course and got themselves recognized within either the
company they work for or working for themselves as what they believed was as close as they could
possibly be to be an electrician and it's a hot topic in our industry about the things you need
to be an electrician okay so um yeah it's worth wearing anymore but might be one then
conversations for your classmates as well in it you know well gaza's dropped a bombshell
but you can see it from the airport you know you've got no yeah you're not really going to go
with it no i get that yeah so favorite youtube stars then who are your favorite youtube stars
put me on the spot a bit there sorry i thought you said gary and gordon them for a minute sorry
i didn't quite catch you there i did i said gary gary and if it wasn't us who would it be who's
the one you like watching the most um the cj ah i think he's i think he's quite funny at times but
i'm sure i'm gonna get our mud for that no no i i've got a lot of respect for all of them and i
genuinely like them all so i don't i don't favor any over another but
i do like this yeah i don't mind them i don't i like them all to be quite honest
there are like i said the only reason i like to watch them is
to see what obstacles that people can face and you know how they get around them yeah and other
than things that they come across as well and you installed your own home networking system at home
and you've got your own uh cat six cables sprayed everywhere you're already into that yeah there's
there's a few rooms that have been set up with uh with a cat six and there's a bit
of a switch and whatnot set up in the in their loft and uh touched on with some of the smart
appliances yeah good and i think i think that's a sensible thing in the position you are perhaps
pick the areas that the traditional electrician doesn't want to go down smart he's being one
maybe looking at ev charging dc storage solar pv as it comes back trying sort of things i know i'm
going to specialize in these areas and do some additional courses itself on the training it's
really good well we thanks richard for popping into us even though we've probably destroyed the
myth of the evening course that he's currently on and all these classmates are probably going to be
but it's it's a topic when you're going to keep coming back to an effects me and gordon did a
video that's hidden away that hopefully gordon will leave in the description for this one about
retraining to becoming an electrician and we're always interested in your thoughts and opinions
on it okay so i know it's it's one of them where people believe they've been missiled of course
maybe but if they look to the prospectus it would be different sometimes it's just the language the
lecturer uses we're training to be electricians i know i never used to i used to say to people
right the start at the end of the course what you'd get and you can leave and get your money
back and all right so it's just it's too easy to say in it you know we're doing pottery at the end
of this course we'll all be able to make a pot you know we're doing an electrical course at the end
this will all be electricians so just bear that in mind but leave those comments below i can't
go until get back to every single one of them but if you're an expert got great experience or can
follow it through with other people's comments please answer them for us help them you know
build a community here of one that we're trying to help everybody in those comments i mean gordon
and joe will try and get back to as many as we can thanks a lot richard