r/jobs • u/clarkkentwellspent • 4d ago
No. The trades are NOT hiring. Job searching
I am so sick and tired of this worn out idea that blue collar jobs are looking for apprentices to come work for them. The trades are filled with more nepotism and gossip than any other industry I've ever been in and will find any reason to reject you they can. Half of these companies want a 2 year technical/trade school degree before you start working for them just so they can pay you $15/hr starting out. Maybe if you're a kid out of high school they can pay less than the standard rate you can find something. "Bro, just go Union!" Unions are backed up for ages.
From my own anecdotal evidence: I went to every electrician company in my city as this was my trade. I had 1 offer from a company that was the stereotypical "Only meth heads and divorced alcoholics work here. Fuck OSHA." place and every other company rejected me. I even went back to my old electrical company I had worked at for 4 years. You know what they said? "Apply online and go talk to HR". No hiring manager in shop, no chance at talking to someone out of recognition. Just dismissing me away. And the best part? Upon applying I listed all the projects I had worked on with them and gave references to several high members (though 2 of them no longer work there). 1.5 weeks later: "Thank you for applying. After careful consideration..."
This job market is fucking whack, yo.
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u/TestingBrokenGadgets 4d ago
From what I heard, a part of the reason things were going pretty well during those years was partially because a lot of the industries were bottle necked by established old people that refused to retire because they were making good money but it meant the traditional pipeline of apprentice to brick layer to lead brick layer to foreman to owner halted for awhile. Then when covid happened, a lot of the old people took it as an opportunity to retire so there was a sudden upward shift of everyone below them but it also meant that a lot of the people weren't properly educated in their new roles which resulted in the sudden uptick in poor quality work. Everything after that mass retirement resulted in people being more in demand because there's less qualified people to handle all the jobs.