kshansen
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2012
- Messages
- 11,184
- Location
- Central New York, USA
- Occupation
- Retired Mechanic in Stone Quarry
I would also say the military captures a good amount of these people though, you get experience working on reputable machinery along with all the other benefits of being in the military. If they decide to get out, they can use that experience to land a job somewhere they can be of use.
I'll start by saying I support those in the services and my experience with dealing with an ex-military mechanic, at least those under 60 years old involved only one guy looking for a job at the shop where I worked.
The problem I had trying to give my boss feedback on the young man is he had know idea of what he worked on in civilian terms, fault worked both ways as when he mentioned the equipment he had been trained he only knew the military designation for it so I had no idea what it was either!
I also got the impression that in the military only certain grade levels were allowed to do certain jobs. One example he gave me is that he was allowed to install an injector in a Detroit, he did know what that was, but was required to step back and let someone with a higher grade adjust the rack and time it. I can understand a system like this as you can't just give someone an afternoons class on something then expect them to be an expert.
I'm sure if I had been talking with a person who had say 10 years in the service and had much more training the conversation would have made me feel like I needed to go back to school to compete with the "new guy"!
In the end he was not hired, but that might have been good for him as this was just prior to the shop being "down-sized" more or less out of existence.