If you’re hoping to be a service engineer, then you need to know that a lot of work is required to reach that level of expertise. You’ll need a healthy mixture of qualifications and experience to meet that kind of standard and juggle that hefty workload. Still, if you’re motivated and raring to go, you’ll be achieving your goals in no time.
Field service engineers work with customers and clients to perform maintenance work on any engineering products. They’ll also work in installations and make service repairs and help to facilitate sales too by talking up the machinery. In light of this, many different skills are needed.
Consequently, here’s a quick rundown of the qualifications and experience you’ll need in order to become a service engineer.
The Qualifications
Service engineers need vocational training in a technical field, be it an apprenticeship shadowing the professionals or an associate degree in engineering or engineering technology from a university. This will enable you to merge both study and practical application, and then build your knowledge while putting it to practical use alongside.
Remember, you’re trying to build a solid technical background here. Try to be literate in branches of mathematics such as trigonometry to help you with angles and lengths and become well versed in computer speak and algebra too. If you have certified qualifications in these areas, you’ll appear a more capable and knowledgeable candidate when you’re going up for a job in service engineering.
Still, it’s important to remember that a formal education is a good start, and a good start alone. If you’re committed to the profession, keep learning. New tools, machines and methods will constantly be developed in the technology driven times we’re living in, so stay on trend and up to date too.
The Experience
In many circles, experience is more valuable than qualifications, and you’ll typically need around 7 years’ experience to be considered for a career in service engineering. Unfortunately, degrees are no longer a rarity, or a unique achievement that gives any jobbing person a one-way ticket to a thriving career, and success won’t happen on grades alone. After all, what’s more appealing; someone who can read out of a textbook, or someone who gets the job done?
Get yourself experience from anywhere relevant and build it up. While service engineering is a highly specialist field, even working alongside plumbers and regular electricians for a while will teach you the basics. It shows you’ve got a worth ethic, and that you can familiarize yourself with different tools and techniques. You could even be installing quality equipment from JLA in no time, so really get stuck into the working lifestyle as soon as possible.
Remember, even working in a shop could be (temporarily) useful here if you’re in your teens. After all, you’d be regularly engaging with customers, up-selling products, practicing your business-like demeanor, and fleshing out your time management skills. Transferable skills can be found anywhere and everywhere, but the larger point is to keep your CV busy. Employers are impressed by a person with a strong, focused work ethic.
