Blog

May 24, 2016 Brute force is not required! Misconceptions abound about the trades and the people who work in them. Many of these misconceptions date back to a bygone era when there might have been more truth to them. One of these misconceptions is that the trades involve a lot of heavy lifting, so brute...

May 9, 2016 Old habits die hard! The knee-jerk answer some people might give to that question is because the skilled trades are not very welcoming to women. That may have been true in the past but for the most part not anymore. Social attitudes have evolved over the years and even where they haven’t,...

April 26, 2016 Robot plumbers are a long, long way off Can trade workers be replaced by machines? That would seem to be the implication by a computer scientist at Rice University, who predicts that by 2045 machines will be capable of doing almost any job a human can. He cites the rate of progress […]

April 12, 2016 Take pride in what you aspire to be In my last article I described a conversation I once had with an affluent suburban mother whose son was interested in an HVAC career. She knew nothing about the field and contacted me when I was a trade magazine editor who had written about […]

March 22, 2016 Tell your parents what’s great about the skilled trades I’ll never forget a conversation I had some years ago when I served as editor of Plumbing & Mechanical magazine. I spent almost an hour on the phone with a mom talking about a potential HVAC career for her 19-year-old son....

March 7, 2016 The trades are in the forefront of the ecology movement To their credit, young people today are more environmentally conscious than just about any generation in history. They know that the future well-being of our society depends on conserving energy and water resources and avoiding pollution...

February 26, 2016 By Renée Cardarelle The HVAC industry is facing a severe workforce shortage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the HVAC industry will face a 21% increase in jobs by 2022, coupled with the fact that there are not enough HVAC technicians to fill job needs today, this is a serious...

February 19, 2016 Employers can train for skills Getting a job in a skilled trade doesn’t necessarily require a lot of experience. Many trade employers are willing to train people who have a high mechanical IQ but not necessarily proven skills or experience with trade work. In particular, residential...

February 5, 2016 Go to college if you like retail sales! Did you know the one out of four retail salespersons has a college degree? So do almost one out of five telemarketers, one out of six bartenders and one out of seven waiters/waitresses. Is that because these jobs have gotten so complicated they...