How do you find skills ,aptitudes
in certain jobs? Do you just take a material from the internet ,read it and digest it(as in you write everything from that material in a notebook)? I have no idea what to write in a CV with these subjects because in school and highschool I had no one to guide me and I had to learn everything from the internet,e-books,educational videos. My mother graduated from a Diploma Mill and my father finished his highschool but he was incapable of giving any actual advices because he worked at a bar.
What I’m trying to say is that in certain jobs you need some formal training and I haven’t found that. When I was in the 11th grade I participated in a project for electricians and I had to look at what others did with their hands because I had no skills/aptitudes. Sure, there are jobs in programming which do not require a lot of skills/aptitudes but I had no talent in these jobs. I went to an employment agency to change my qualification from highschool(data operator) to something else and all I could find were some short courses in trades(electricians,plumbers,cook,waiter).
It’s so unfair that most of the employers ask you some questions about certain situations and you don’t know how to answer them!
Can you get formal training from youtube or other videos if you have no one to guide you?
What happens if you get a qualification/degree without any skills/aptitudes? Would someone hire you?
Look at it from the employer’s point of view: if they’re looking to hire someone, they want to be reasonably sure that that person will be able to do what they hire them to do. That means they want some evidence that you already have the necessary skills and abilities. Or, if they’re the kind of things you could learn on the job, they at least want some evidence that you’re capable of learning.
As for how you acquire those skills and abilities, and whether it’s even possible without formal training: that depends on the job.
You learn skills by doing. If you don’t have skills, and want to acquire them, a common (but non-academic) route is to convince an employer that you want to learn them and that you will be an asset to the company once you’ve mastered them. To do this, though, you also have to convince them you possess desirable “soft” traits such as good work ethic, fast learner, honesty, good communication skills, dependability, etc.
Calling it “unfair” is a bit harsh. Look at this way: an employer is looking to pay someone (you, you hope) to do a certain job. Since it’s their money they’re spending they need to ensure they’re getting their money’s worth. So it is indeed very fair that they ask you those questions.
If you don’t know how to answer them then perhaps the job is not right for you. Do you really want to do a job that you have no experience or training in? I suppose something like fry cook at McDonalds would be a perfectly cromulent job for someone with no work experience, but do you really believe that, say, a software startup is looking to hire someone with absolutely no programming experience as one of their programmers? Likely not.
I’m having a hard time understanding this. The whole point of getting a qualification is to be qualified to do something. You aren’t going to graduate from a CDL program having never learned to drive a truck. You aren’t going to be able to get an electrician’s license not knowing how to wire a house. You aren’t going to get a job as a pipefitter having no welding skills. You can’t be a doctor without completing med school. The list goes you. By graduating from these programs – assuming it’s an accredited program with respected and rigorous training that meets industry standards – you, be default, have the necessary skills/aptitudes.
See the pattern? School and / training and / or work experience is what gives you the skills to do a particular job. So the first step is to get the knowledge and experience. The second step is to find employment in your field of choice using those skills and your experience. And since you asked, no, watching YouTube videos does not count.
Go to school, join a vocational training program, or get hired on as an apprentice in your field of choice. Those are the only reliable paths to financial stability.
I used to do contract engineering CAD work in the 80’s and 90’s and knew more than one guy that didn’t know how to draw on the computer (but was a decent draftsman) that applied and got a position just by being able to log in and get to the application. One guy told me he got fired twice before he took a position on a night shift crew with nothing but other contract employees. He was a likeable fellow that was fun to go out to bars with (at our 9:00 two hour lunch) so his coworkers (including me) taught him enough to get him going until he became an “expert”.
It’s tough to answer your OP because you are quite vague. If you were to provide a list of concrete skills employers are looking for that you have a tough time fulfilling, others in similar fields may be able to guide you. That said, broadly speaking, you can approach “Are you capable of doing ThingX?” in a few ways:
- “Yes, I can do that. I’ve done it before at a previous job.”
- “I don’t know how to do precisely that. But I’ve successfully done SimilarThingY previously, and I’m confident I can learn the differences to do ThingX well too.” Then you proceed to talk about how awesome you were at doing SimilarThingY.
- “I don’t know how to do that. But I have an interest in learning how to do ThingX because I feel it’s a useful skill to have. I’ve demonstrated I can learn new skills quickly, such as the time when I had to learn OnlyVaguelyRelatedThingZ in a few weeks/months for a different job.”
- “I don’t know how to do that, sorry” (and then you probably don’t get hired)
To try and address your main questions:
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Your high school learning sounds like everyone elses; it’s not meant to set you up with ready-to-go skills and qualifications to enter the workforce wherever you want. It’s been a while since I was there, but I assume there are a few classes showing you how to write a basic resume, but until you know how to (or get experience doing) something you won’t have much to put in it. HS isn’t meant to give you a great resume / CV in of it’s self. Some people are lucky to have parents who can teach them how to write a great resume; but I’d say most don’t… it’s really not necessary at all.
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Some jobs require formal training, but very many do not. A large percentage of entertainers for example don’t have degrees in comedy, sports, music, etc. You can get them, but they aren’t required. And yes, some occupations requiring certifications can be self-taught, though that tends to be a longer route to take as you may not know what skills you need to learn or your on-the-job training might not expose you to everything you should be learning. My uncle was self-taught as a heavy-duty mechanic; after several years of back yard experience he challenged the exam and failed, though only one one topic. He found a mechanic who taught him how to do what he’d failed at, then challenged again, passed, and got his mechanic’s licence.
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Lying about having qualifications you don’t will give you mixed results depending on how convincing you are on paper or in an interview, and how serious and quickly you can acquire those qualifications if you do manage to fool an employer. Also, it depends of the job it’s self. If you need to run a complex machine or understand technical directions in a specialized field, you’ll be sniffed out within minutes when you can’t actually perform. Lying about having worked as a line cook or a taxi driver, you’ll probably be able to get away with that.
“Formal training” by definition is having someone qualified to teach/guide/evaluate you according to a recognized standard, and your achieving a certain level of competence. So no, you can’t get formal training alone. As described above, you might be able to self-teach and eventually get certification through another route, but that won’t work for for everything.
It’s not really possible to achieve certification without also acquiring skills. If you earn a chemistry degree, you know how to read chemical equations, work with chemicals, use glassware and other equipment. Those are all skills. But yes, even with zero actual skills you can be hired to do something you have no idea how to do. Look up the Cyber Ninjas who were hired to do one of the US election audits recently.
I’m not sure, but perhaps you’re talking about behavioral questions. Those are questions like “tell me about a time when you displayed XYZ ability”, as opposed to the more traditional “tell me the steps to change a car tire”. You can look up how to answer these types of questions online; they are becoming more popular so learning how to answer them is a skill it’s self.
The OP may want to look into going to a Community College to get a two-year degree, at least for starters. Consider in particular a Community College that offers vocational majors. Many colleges have classes in automotive work; bookkeeping; nursing; electrical work; computer networking; and many other fields. They specifically teach the kinds of skills to get started at the entry levels in various careers.
First and foremost, don’t lie. Nothing good will come from it.
You don’t fake having skills, you put the work into acquiring them. Community college is a good idea, but don’t forget that apprenticeships are also a possibility. Below is a link that describes electrical apprenticeships.
You cannot get formal training that way, as there is no evaluation and no one to certify you. But you can learn useful stuff.
Item 2 doesn’t have to be at work or in a classroom. I once had a job candidate give me a copy of a spreadsheet he had written to organize a football pool as an example of the work he could do with spreadsheets. It wasn’t nearly as impressive as he thought it was (a bad sign) but it was competent, and certainly demonstrated to me his level of ability.
My husband took several years off to rear children, and when he returned to the workforce he wanted to start a new career as a web developer. He had a portfolio of websites he had created as a volunteer for the local boy scouts and similar groups. That was enough to get him his first job. It was a crappy job where they didn’t trust him, but it got his foot in the door, and he’s now a successful web developer.
“In Soviet Russia…”
Best advice I’ve seen here: Community or Technical College. I taught at a tech school, and after one or two years, students were getting jobs (or internships that turned into jobs), and often making more than I was!
But the important thing was that the students were learning important, needed, marketable skills from the ground up. Meaning they learned Foundational Skills A,B&C before using those to learn A2, then A3 (which you might miss if you’re watching YouTubes of people building an A3 without learning and practicing Skills A,B&C).
In a year or so, my students were already doing high-level work. Close to graduation (2 yrs, Associate Degree), most were doing professional-level work. And by getting a certificate or a degree, or even just a recommendation from their teachers, they could prove they had those skills.
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You’ve got a great future ahead of you, @wolly! Don’t cheap out by faking skills or lying or just getting a crappy job. Find what you want to do and really go for it. Hope everyone’s advice helps!
Oh, I should’ve mentioned that a Community/Tech School can be 1/10 as much as a “real” college. And there are scholarships/work study/grants that make it easy to afford.
Also seconding the idea of an apprenticeship. A friend did, and became an electrician. Now he runs his own business, with a number of employees and trucks, but he still gets to work on the jobs.
You could always “job shadow” someone in the field, just to see what they do. You invariably get good advice thrown in.
Hey, that brings up a good point: Call or email some (engineers or web developers or whatever) and ask them about their field. I’d have students do that, and I’d make an appointment for a (short) chat in the next week or so.
One kid got through my defenses… he called in the morning and ended his pitch with “… So I was wondering if you’d have fifteen minutes over lunch to look at some of my work?”
“THAT was a great line. I mean, who doesn’t have fifteen minutes? And especially at lunch hour?”
I ended up talking to him for forty-five minutes (oh, and a month later, we hired him).