Thanks for the replies.
I understand the general opinion in here but the fact is i cant afford to leave my well paid job to go through 2-3 years of training. I, like most of you im sure, have a mortgage and bills to pay.
Evening courses are also out as i work shifts.
I don't expect to learn a trade in 8 weeks. I'm not naive i know its going to take much much longer but surely this would give me a huge leap onto the ladder in the fact i would become more employable?!?
If you want to become qualified and get work bad enough then you will do it but something along the line will need to be sacrificed, as in personal time or whatever.
Back in the nineties I decided I wanted to specialise more rather than doing basic plumbing / building work so I enrolled on evening course for nvq 2 and it took me 2 years and then another year of 1 day a week because I decided to do the nvq 3 as well.
After 2 years I had my plumbing certs and gas ccn1 in the bag and signed up to do the appliances on gas as well which I completed in just over the 3 years.
I did have a friend who did self employed work and I would go and give him a hand at weekends for a bit of cash helping with boiler installs and that sort of thing, learning my way around a u gauge, and it all helped with the college course.
I had allsorts of clever people telling me I was wasting my time and I would never get employed because of no on site experience, anyway, within a week of completing my appliances on the acs scheme I landed myself a job with a gas maintenance company doing mainly servicing and some installs. The boss agreed to start me on a six week trial on a very much reduced rate (at my request) and to put me with one of the other guys for a while to watch, help and learn. Within 2 weeks I was going servicing on my own and within 3 weeks he took me to one side and said he was putting me up to the top rate as he was pleased with the work I was doing and the attitude I had to my work.
I was determined that if I was going to put in all the time and effort learning and doing exams then I was definitley going to get a job, so now I work for myself, am corgi and oftec registered and would always rather be my own boss than it be the other way around. I know it is harder now with the way the college course do it and you have to have so much on site experience etc. but I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you want it bad enough you will do it, you gotta be confident, work hard, work safely-even it it means you are slow at first, which you will be, have support of your family and don't give up. I always think going out on your own is good, its a steep learning curve but you've got to be confident, you've got to be prepared to lose out financially sometimes if you make a mistake but there's nothing to make you learn faster than seeing money disappear which should have been in your pocket.
All that being said, the industry has and is changing a lot and and its not the get rich quick trade some people seem to think it is and I often wonder about changing to something else but then think that things could be worse, so make sure it's what you want before jumping in, and if you do, good luck..
