Electronic Tech needed / Job offered ...

[DivAud]

Looking for a qualified electronic tech down here in sunny Florida, I do not see a catagory to post for jobs offered... Can anyone lead me to this, or should I suggest a job / services offered catagory... Or is this out of line here ????
Thanks..!!

[Leo_Gnardo]

From the Frozen North, it really is tempting to up and go right this minute as another foot of snow accumulates. (put shivering snowman smiley thing here)

I think you'll be hearing from some more local candidates as the day wears on. Sounds like a good deal!

[Enzo]

It doesn't come up often enough for us to have a separate section for jobs. This section is probably the best choice. ANyone you might want to hire certainly will read this section.


And good luck. It used to be my job to fly around the country and hire technicians.

[km6xz]

Looking for a qualified electronic tech down here in sunny Florida, .....

Qualified....? In what? You would save a lot of time in weeding out tire kickers by being specific in what you need done and the general range of salary. Everyone who ever changed a tube here thinks they are "qualified" so you will get more serious applicants with more qualifying criteria listed.

[Mick Bailey]

I've interviewed and recruited dozens of technical staff at all levels, from entry-level school-leaver posts to heads of section. I've also sat on interview panels for posts in disciplines other than technical roles. One of the themes that's been fairly consistent over the last 10 years or so is the nature and relevance of qualification, and what exactly defines qualification to perform a particular job effectively.

There's a separation between a qualification that's legally necessary in order to work in a particular job (such as a doctor or lawyer) and one which is indicative of a certain level of training achieved. All too often jobs are advertised on the basis of essential qualification, with little attention given to other factors which may collectively be more important. Quite often I've interviewed candidates who've held degrees in relevant subjects and had a good academic background, but who didn't have the lateral thinking and initiative to be a good repairman/woman. Equally I've taken on unqualified staff who've turned out to have excellent diagnostic and repair skills. Knowledge doesn't automatically mean understanding.

The balance has shifted to equate relevant, recent practical experience with paper qualification. This is good, because older, experienced candidates can often appear to be under-qualified on paper compared to younger (often less experienced) competitors. It also gives an opportunity for practical, hands-on, skilled people who may have entered the workplace from school but who didn't obtain any further academic qualifications.

For three years I worked in developing successful systems to equate skill levels to pay, and to monitor achievement for career progression. In evaluating staff for technical roles it's usual to profile them against a skills matrix defined for the particular job. The same skills matrix is useful in assessing candidates for vacancies.

So, the balance needs to be struck between experience and qualification, theory and practice, knowledge and understanding.

[DivAud]

I prefer to give a basic outline of what I need. I get a lot more responses that way... I get to sort through them to see who is the best person for the position I need filled. If I get too specific, many people just don't respond... If I get too general, I have a lot more fluff to wade through.... I would rather wade through more fluff and talk to candidates that may not have responded....

[Enzo]

Yep, whatever works for you. Your fluff pile might be 20 resumes, where another guy's fluff pile might be 200 resumes, so clearly the need to winnow it down is different for the two guys.


Do you want someone who can sit down at the bench and be useful from day one? Or are you interested in someone with little experience that you can train up?

[km6xz]

Enzo, you should delete this thread.
There is no indication that this is any more than a fishing attempt to get personal information from a wide range of people. With no other details, anyone who responds is warned that giving any personal info to such an unknown poster is risking identity theft or worse.

[Enzo]

You are right Stan that it always pays to be cautious. But I do find evidence of legitimacy:

DAI Home

Pro Sound Equipment Repair Tampa, FL - Diversified Audio Inc.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Diver...56715324349513


DivAud, I hope you can understand why we might have concerns, so is this you? If so why not ask for responses to be direct, that should help feel secure. And maybe some background for us?

[Enzo]

You are right Stan that it always pays to be cautious. But I do find evidence of legitimacy:

DAI Home

Pro Sound Equipment Repair Tampa, FL - Diversified Audio Inc.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Diver...56715324349513


DivAud, I hope you can understand why we might have concerns, so is this you? If so why not ask for responses to be direct, that should help feel secure. And maybe some background for us?

[DivAud]

Hello Enzo,
Yes ... This is us... I don't see where I have asked anyone for any specific information here... My original thought was to see if there was a location for job listings on this site. I then though it might be benificial for a open discussion about how others go about thier hiring, where they look for candidates, where they advertise.... I didn't really expect anyone to apply for a job from here...

My first post did ask if this was out of line here....

[Enzo]

Oh we are not mad at you or anything, Stan is being wisely cautious. No, you asked no probing questions. I think he fears you might be someone luring the unsuspecting into a closer relation whom you might then try to obtain ID info. If you are legit, you are legit, it would be nice for anyone recruiting to make real clear who they are in the future.

Certainly I am not accusing you of anything, but you must be aware of the Craigs List scammers who lure people to "job interviews" only to rob them when they arrive. Phony apartment rentals on Craigs list also wind up with lost "security deposits". So we all need to be cautious.

You have been here only a short time, but we have to chase spammers out of here all the time.


The discussion you propose is of course a good idea, and it is one we have here from time to time already. Mostly up in the Music Electronics section, We have talked about what we look for in a hire. and shop policies, repair pricing, even what to do about gear that is not picked up for months on end. I am not too sure how well the search feature would find those threads, I am not sure a key word to suggest in the search. But they are there, and you might find them interesting. There are also discussions of opening shops and of closing them.

[DivAud]

Thanks Enzo,
I didn't think anyone was mad or anything... I just didn't see where the leap was made from me asking where I should post something, to me probing for personal info... I appreciate what you guys are doing here, and I applaud everyone looking our for everybody's personal info... I haven't made good use of this site like I should sometimes, there is only so much time in a day, and a lot of things on my plate .. I have been a member here since Febuary 2008... I will try and make better use of the search functions... Thanks again....

[Enzo]

It might even be easier just to scan down the thread titles in th Music Electronics section, though it would be through MANY pages. Such conversations might be under customer related topics, shop management threads, and a host of other stuff. If I come across one, I'll try to link it for you. I'd imagine it would be a hard one to search for here.

[km6xz]

The leap was made by your first 16 words posted: "Electronic Tech needed / Job offered ...

Looking for a qualified electronic tech down here in sunny Florida" . Others were probably just as directed to conclude it was a job posting, if private messages and resumes were forwarded.
Sorry if my reading of your post gave rise to a mistaken understanding.

I am moderator for a very large paid membership photography community and have seen how problems develop in trying to keep a balance between usefulness and civil discourse, the only such forum and community on the internet filled with photography oriented forums.

There have been discussions of finding techs and techniques used but they would be hard to find since they are often sidetracks stemming from a technical question and not in the subject line. The best method to survey the various opinions would be to post a direct question as the topic here or in the Lobby forums. There is no separate membership category for pro shop owners or managers here so you might get a mix of informed and imagined-to-be informed opinions.
My own feeling is that there are few qualified techs. The reason is that compared to other technical fields that are not so hobby oriented, training and education needed is focused on contemporary technologies, whereas pro audio is one of the few fields where a working deep knowledge of 4-5 generations of technology is needed to handle the mix of equipment and interfaces expected in studios and venue systems. To accumulate in depth experience and knowledge, time is required, a lot of time. I have never met a good diagnostician in pro audio under 45 years old. There are some good specialists who confine themselves to a particular era or technology however. A large shop which has many specialists can have more flexibility in finding techs to fill a more narrowly defined skill set. I never expected my keyboard techs to know anything about tube compressors or guitar amps but they never needed to with a large staff. The only common element tying it all together was me unfortunately.
Another factor is training, how much time and investment are you willing to put into training a potential candidate? Finding good attitude and work ethic is hard enough so finding that in someone who desires to learn and be a long term member of the pro audio service world is an option worth looking into. The base knowledge and thinking skills vary a lot with the society in which the person grew up and that hurts employers in the US now since who are products of the primary education system and high school are not normally good critical thinker or diagnostics oriented. It is the society that does not value those traits, but some do.
Older techs who have a lot of experience are gambles also. Something is usually wrong when a 50 year old with 40 years experience will work in an industry with no stability for $18-25/hour. There is a reason and finding out that reason to see if you can deal with it and mold your expectations and needs around it can pay off but requires flexibility. So you have an older experienced class who grew up in the 50s and 60s when knowing something was important, and you have new entrants into the job market who know very little how to solve a problem regardless of training. Making a business work depends on managing these and a few other variations on the same themes, and less on technical chops of the owner/manager.
Picking clients to cater to and who to avoid is more important to long term success than any thing a tech can or can't do however. One of the traits that hurts small shops is being a generalist, taking in everything so nothing is in enough volume to become efficient. The niche a small shop can fill that a larger volume shop can't is to become very specialized on only the product or technology which fills the incoming storage but no more. If too much is coming in, time to increase prices to regulate the volume to fit your capability, allowing you to get the highest efficiency from the investment in time and resources. The reason specialty shops do better than general shops is that a small specialty shop can afford to stock what is needed to finish most of the repairs in one sitting. For example my shop was a generalist shop but with a number of high volume specialties. It was a time when digital recording systems were very high volume, 600-1000 ADATs a month or 100-200 Panasonic or Tascam DAT decks a month. Those were very profitable since every part was in stock. A deck, start to finish, from incoming to on the shelf to ready for pickup or ship out was averaging 3/4 hour including cleaning the bench between tasks and entering the data in the system database. A shop seeing only a few a week would need 2 hours minimum and when factoring in ordering parts, reassembly and storage while the parts are shipped in, and other inefficiencies, they probably need to charge 2-4 times as much for a profit as a specialty shop. We charged a flat rate of $65. There are other smaller shops on this forum which charged $125/hour and took several hours which made less net profit than I did. Oh, yes, the techs who worked on ADATs and DA-88s were all trained in-house without engineering degrees and did not work on Crown power amps or Studer analog 24 track decks or anything else that required a wider range of skills. So identifying markets is very important to the growth potential and profitability of a shop, and the ease with which employees can be found
So a lot of your tech skill level requirements depend on how specialized you are, and the client base. Industrial electronics designs changed in part due to the lack of technical skill, and designed their products to be less dependent on skill to maintain. HP back in the day spent millions every year supporting junior college tech programs trying to get enough suitable techs for their products. They realized the programs just were not up to the task so redesigned their philosophy of product design to eliminate field service. Even in pro audio, board replacement or exchange of defective units as being more effective than paying techs to troubleshoot. Replacing a $50 board is much cheaper than paying a shop $25/hr to repair to component level because of the need for parts stock, warranty staff, printing manuals and other costs involved in supporting a service network.