I’m currently training to be a bus operator, a job I took because of great benefits and good pay. What really surprised me, though, was how involved the training was for the position-
The training is 8 weeks long, though because of the size of our training ‘class’, ours has been extended to 11 weeks. The training is, in a way, a kind of post-employment screening process: All the people that took the written examination, passed the interview, background and drug test must complete the requirements of the class. Some of the requirements are license-related (getting a California Class B-P license so the employee can operate the vehicle) but even people that already have a B license with a P endorsement still have to go through all the steps/pass everything. So in summary, even the 35 of us that got hired have no guarantee of a job until we meet the requirements. And from what I’ve heard from my uncle (another employee hired earlier this year) some classes only have about half their trainees pass training and actually get to drive. :eek:
For me, all the ‘classroom’ type stuff is easy and fun- the instructors joke around and give amusing stories to illustrate what not to do in situations. However, when we are doing the actual driving the “DMV hat” comes on and it gets tense. I’m not overwhelmed by driving the 40-foot vehicles downtown in busy traffic- its actually easier than I thought it would be. What is difficult for me, however, is having someone hovering over me scrutinizing every decision I make. We get scored on our performance, and every 4-5 days the standards go up. Since I want this job, I’m really pressured to work through my challenges as best as one can when you only get about 1 hour of drive time (if I have trouble with radio codes, I can spend hours in the evenings/weekends practicing and memorizing them. But I only get about 5 hours/week of actual driving, with no ‘extra’ practice, so its on a steeper learning curve).
Admittedly I have worried about washing out- 3 people have already flunked out and the class is only halfway through. But I’m also really determined to overcome this, so I’m hoping that all this pressure and stress of learning something brand new helps hold myself to a high standard and make the actual final drive test a piece of cake in comparison.
FYI: Anyone living in the Bay Area/San Jose can see a cheesy recruitment commercial for the VTA, starring the very individuals that are training me.
I’ve never had a job with especially difficult training. Boring training, check. Inadequate training, check.
That said, is your driving test on real streets or a course? If it’s on real streets and you know more or less where it is, maybe driving them a few times in your own car would help some. That way at least you are getting very familiar with the signs, places with bad visibility, potholes, whatever might otherwise distract you for the big test.
I work as a 911 call taker and police dispatcher… training was-- intense.
8 weeks of classroom work, followed by about a year of working with a coach. Takes about 6 months to certify as a 911 call taker and 6 months longer for police dispatch.
There is a VERY high turnover rate for trainees as only about 30-40% actually are able to finish training for various reasons.
Vehicle inspection/brake test- Easy after you memorize all ~260 things you need to check on the vehicle, though the brake test is insta-fail if you mess up.
Skills course- Practiced this one last Thursday. Pretty easy; just driving around/backing up between orange cones. There’s not really a time limit and its pretty forgiving even if you knock a few cones around.
Driving test- Spend 90 minutes with a DMV-certified instructor, in my case driving around Santa Clara county. The only help I get on this one is working to improve my current driving skills each day, and making a mental note when one of the instructors mentions, "See intersection X? That may be on the final…hint hint ". There are already a few places I’m pretty sure they’ll take me- places where its easy to accidentally be in the wrong turn lane, TIGHT right turns, etc. Fortunately, you pass so long as you don’t accumulate 45 points or do something that warrants an insta- fail (roll through a railroad crossing w/o stopping, jumping a curb with a rear wheel while turning, etc) anybody that gets to that point should be fine, because the week prior we have to spend 60-90 minutes a day driving without accumulating more that 7 points. Yesterday I drove and only got 6 points so if I keep up that pace even the drive final should be no problem for me, its just there’s no guarantees so I have to be on my toes.
I just narrowly missed a test that’s possibly the most evil test in all of creation. It’s 6 hours long, the average score on it is a 73 (passing is a 70), and 66 percent of people pass the exam. I got a 67. I missed by 7 questions. I have to wait another month before I could take it aain, but I would have to find a new “sponsor”, because the higher ups didn’t want to keep me on the payroll. The office loved me, but the boss of my boss said I had to go.
The initial training for non licensed people. Fairly easy. Some basic information and training on how to use the computer systems.
Series 7 license. I didn’t find it as difficult as some people do. There was a lot of marterial to cover, but some of it I knew. I’d say it was as difficult as a 300 level college class
Series 63 license. Fairly easy. About the same difficulty as a high school class.
Broker training. More challenging than my initial training. Still, fairly easy. Learning about how to actually place trades as well as how to determine if a client is able to place a particular trade.
As a medical assistant in a dermatology office, you wouldn’t think the training would be all that difficult or take all that long. But you wouldn’t believe how long it takes to learn everything! It took me a good two years to learn everything that I do. For one thing, most of our duties are not things you learn in MA school, so it’s mostly on-the-job training. For another thing, you can really hurt a patient if you don’t know what you’re doing, so it takes a long time to get signed off on things- they have to know that you’re doing it perfectly before you’re on your own. Now that I’ve been there almost 4 years, I am just PILED with duties- I literally have to run all day to get everything done. That’s because it’s hard to find good, smart people, so they just make me do everything (well, that’s what if feels like, anyway). But that’s okay, because I know that they appreciate me and they give me good raises.
Around here, you usually get thrown in and left to sink or swim. Then, about two years later, some pointy-headed bean counter discovers you haven’t had the training for the job you’ve been doing for two years and insists you take some classes. Usually right before a major deadline, too.
When you do take one the classes, you discover the class has no relevance to the real world.
Then there’s the annual ethics, harrasment-free workplace, diversity, fire safety, environmental responsibilty, etc. There’s no avoiding those; they’re mandatory training. Fortunately, some of them are online now and we can take them at our convenience.
Yeah, that Series 7 nipped me. It was all new material for me.
Everything else about the job was pie…that test sucked. I could do better on the test next time, though…no problem.
Allegedly, MIT designed the Power School curriculum as a three year program to cover a variety of nuclear engineering related subjects. Power School is six months long.
That said, I don’t know of anyone that was booted from the pipeline as an authentic academic failure. It didn’t matter how much trouble you were having, if you kept trying, they’d keep giving you help. Stop trying, they kick you out of the program. Which actually works pretty well, fleetside, as we get people who are smart enough to get along without help, who know when to ask for help if they need it, and/or who will keep working at something until they get it right.
Well, I for one am glad to hear that bus driver training is very comprehensive. So what happens after bus drivers pass the road test - they forget everything they learned?
My current job had a very steep, very high learning curve (payment processor for a large, national corporation). It didn’t help that I had a co-worker telling me almost daily that I had to get much faster and better - I think I’m doing a fantastic job (and so does my supervisor), but according to her, I’m a drooling incompetent. The work isn’t tough at all, it’s just very, very detail-oriented, with exceptions and things you just have to know by knowing everywhere. As I get to know the job better, I’m dangerously close to enjoying it because it is so complicated.
I work in a call center and the project I was trained for has a five day training class that we finished in about two and a half. I don’t remember what all we did the last half of the work-week but I do remember watching *National Treasure *and The Incredibles.
I currently work at the tiny library at my college. I started over the summer, so training was about a day of "here’s where stuff is, here’s how certain computer programs or databases work, here’s the huge training binder that you should try to read through in the next couple days, have fun’.
The worst training I’ve had (and in fact the only real training), was when I got a job doing data entry for the government. That required forty hours spread over two weeks, culminating in an exam. That’s right, your taxes paid for me to spend forty hours learning how to type numbers from a piece fo paper into a computer.
Strategic Planning; started by working at a management consultant out of business school. Years of training - a combination of conceptual problem framing, structured research design, hard-care analytical/financial number crunching - and learning how to help executives through the planning process so they are committed to the result - committed enough to spend millions of dollars and company resources and time.
Weird, fascinating stuff - as much art as science. Oh, and your record is hanging out there for all to see; the company either performs - or it doesn’t. My company just bought another company based on a plan I put into place a couple of years ago - no pressure!
I work in IT in a mega-corp although it isn’t that kind of IT. I work at the intersection of business and information analysis. We didn’t get any training to speak of. If we needed training, why on earth would they hire us? We are supposed to be experts on everything :rolleyes: That type of thing worked fine with me. I just walk into to someones office. notebook in hand, and tell them what I need them to teach me right then. It doesn’t work so well with some of our more shy consultants. We always have to remind them that they need to be pushy and their own training is their responsibility. The company does have plenty of training but almost all of it is too basic for our job level.
Heh, I was going to mention my training to be a dispatcher, too. Except our training was 4 weeks, and I had a trainer that was so burned out from turnover that she refused to train me much at all, and nobody else would help me out. Training was me reading the employee handbook over and over and studying city maps on my own. The department head was an unholy bitch I privately named “The Cryptkeeper” since she had been chain smoking for about the last 100 years. I also became, in short order, the scapegoat for all problems in the department because I was too poorly trained to know when I was being set up, and because the other employees were tired of her abuse.
Yeah. I’m not a dispatcher anymore.
My current job didn’t have very formalized training. I started taking on tasks as I learned them after my first few days, and just learned more and more since.
Training for my job lasted 10 weeks. We had language lessons 5 hours a day, plus around 10 hours a week of student teaching and another few hours of “community integration” topics. Every other weekend we had full day workshops. Plus, we all lived with host families, so there was no getting away. It was very intense and exhausting. I enjoy going back to visit my training village and my host family, but I don’t want to go through PST (pre-service training) again…ever. (Also, I gained like 10 pounds. My host mom was really pleased about this. I was not quite as happy.)
ETA: Oh, and my training village has a population of about 1000, but I think thta may be including the goats. There’s no internet in the town at all. We weren’t allowed to go…pretty much anywhere. Coming from Chicago, it was quite an adjustment.
I work in a call center. My training was 5 days. There was a lot to learn, but they push you to get on the phones ASAP and get over your fear of not knowing things. What you get in training is very basic – all the complexities come up on the job, and you learn as you go, with occasional meetings to oversee progress.
I wouldn’t mind a long training for a job – the more prepared I can feel, the better.
Holy Jebus! I understand that around here wasn’t much different too long ago, but the culture of this place is slowly changing.
The coaches here are all pretty committed to making sure they teach you the best to their ability. It’s very hard though, there’s a lot of various skills that have to come together in order to make a full fledged dispatcher.
Mostly, I feel bad for the citizens & police in your area though. (Who wants a 911 call taker who has no idea what they’re talking about, gathers the wrong info from the caller, gives inaccurate information to the police who then go out and get erverything started off poorly because they don’t have proper info?) This place can be high pressure, but we are all acutely aware of the exactly what it is we’re doing; and its part of the reason why the training is so thorough.
". There are already a few places I’m pretty sure they’ll take me- places where its easy to accidentally be in the wrong turn lane, TIGHT right turns, etc. Fortunately, you pass so long as you don’t accumulate 45 points or do something that warrants an insta- fail (roll through a railroad crossing w/o stopping, jumping a curb with a rear wheel while turning, etc) anybody that gets to that point should be fine, because the week prior we have to spend 60-90 minutes a day driving without accumulating more that 7 points. Yesterday I drove and only got 6 points so if I keep up that pace even the drive final should be no problem for me, its just there’s no guarantees so I have to be on my toes.