Starting over in Trades (Electrician)

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So I'm new to the field taking classes for Journeyman Electrician and currently trying to land an apprenticeship in the Boston Massachusetts area. I am just worried both my lack of even related experience & age makes this a waste of time.

After high school I went to college, earned degree in accounting and worked in the field for 9 years until being laid off in 2009 and just working temp jobs since. Due to getting fired multiple times, lack of references, lack of solid work history make me unemployable regardless of how good or bad the job market is. In my area it is booming, unemployment is under 5% in this region.

As far back as 2009 I had been considering a switch to a skilled trade despite being gainfully employed at that time; I just didn't like corp desk work much and in my recent jobs I was dependent on Adderall and Energy drinks just to be halfway functional.

So I have started the Journeyman electrician license program consisting of 5 classes at a well known college here in the Boston area. I've been looking at the process to get an apprenticeship. The problem is all I've been hearing about is how hard it is to land an apprenticeship these days and impossible at my age of 37. I am the only one in my class without a job at the moment the instructor told me I should get have gotten some real experience before enrolling. Apprentices in the Boston area start at over $20 an hour now with no prior experience.
Given what I have written, do y I have reasonable shot at landing a job or will my application/resume be tossed in the trash without a thought? I think I have found the right combination of meds (even with the risk & chance of addiction/dependence) to be functional where the alternative would be waste the rest of my life on govt disability payments.
Am I just wasting $1400 per class and is it beyond wishful thinking to believe that I can ever work a day in this field?

Hi, I think I share your dislike of corp desk work. There is a artificiality to many corporations, in which we are being asked to finesse things which maybe should not be finessed.

Something in the trades can be more honest, and have healthier feedback between theory and practice.

I wish I had some information to share, and I wish you good luck.

I was doing an electrician course at my college when I was 23 but dropped out half way through because of anxiety. This might not be relevant because I am in the UK but I was the youngest one there and non of us could get an apprenticeship. Everyone was telling us how it was basically pointless to continue especially with the recession. Then we got a new teacher and he reassured us not to give up. The people I am still in contact with are now training with companies but they had to really persist, the others gave up. The ones in training are all over 40 years old and the few apprenticeship schemes that were available at the time were for people under 21 years. You need to keep bugging employers to give you a chance at some experience. Do you need on site experience to finish the course? If it is what you want to do then it is definitely not a waste of time. Good luck.

I decided that this wasn't worth the time or money so I dropped the class so I could get most of my money back. Its nice to be optimistic, but realistically I have close to a zero chance of ever working in the field.

You might want to look at commission sales. I sold furniture and it was more honest than I thought and some of the best sales people were (largely) honest. The hours are long (I don't know, these workaholic norms), although one guy in my training class said, the whole job is kind a break. Sometimes new sales people don't get the best stores, and that is a big one. And people tend to overanalyze streaks. Just like it's highly statistically likely for baseball players to have both good streaks and bad streaks, same with sales people. And the thing to ask myself, am I seeing well and am I swinging well?

This fixation on credit. At best it is pseudo-rational. And with human resource "professionals" (cough, cough) having too much power, it can become industry wide. I assume this was for tax season. And for them to turn down a willing and experienced person for little nickel-and-dime 'perfectionist' reasons, that is a bad business decision. If you really like accounting, you may need to drop off most of your references and go back to school say for your masters. I'm sorry if that's the case but it might be. Maybe other people have other good ideas.

The situation is outrageous. I wish I had more to offer.

Ouch, sorry to hear about your situation. Unfortunately that is a very serious problem I see with the current employment structure...if you get fired or are out of work for an extended period of time, for whatever reason, it can pretty much sabotage your future chances at a job, and I really don't think that should be the case.

Anyway, I think that going to be an electrician is a great avenue to pursue. To be a good one, it will indeed take a good deal of experience. After all, you don't want to end up killing yourself or burning someone's house down. But it is a fairly stable job with good pay, and it doesn't require much education. But then again, I don't know anything about the current job market in that field, and you don't want to end up going to school for it only to find out you can't get a job with it either. My recommendation would be to talk to your instructor in-depth and see what your options are. If you're the only one in your class without a job it tells me that there are indeed jobs out there, but you just need an extra something to get one yourself (be it experience, GPA, volunteer work, etc)

My little brother went into job corps and trained to be an electrician. My brother in law used to work as an electrician. He now manages a papa johns. My brother is now in a program called mechatronics along with a plumber and a machinist,from my point of view, the job outlook for the trades isn't very good.

Mechatronics involves skill sets from various trades, but it's intended to match the needs of manufacturing instead of construction. The age range of my classmates varies from high school to 50s or 60s. Some of my classmates have work already, there is a lot more manufacturing in my area than people realize.

Not to say that the pay is sky high, but the work is mostly technical and a great starting place for more advanced careers.