What a journeyman electrician should do on day one

On day one, a journeyman electrician should take a set of prints and run his piece of the work without you standing over him: lay out and bend the raceway, pull and terminate, know what feeds what, and verify dead before he touches anything. One national electrical contractor gave us the spec in one line: "preferably five to seven years," able to "do raceways, terminate, pull wire."

Use the checklist below to write your spec, screen applicants and judge the first week. It's one step in the full journeyman hiring process.

01The spec in the contractor's words

The best journeyman spec we've heard came off a sales call, and it fits in two sentences. The contractor wanted to "give the prints to a journeyman and say, hey, this goes from point A to point B. Knock it out." Their project manager added the pay side: "If I'm paying somebody 58, that person better be very experienced and I should just be able to point and say, hey, go do it."

That's the standard. At the top of your band, you're paying for no hand-holding. What they were actually getting from agencies was "so-called journeymen that can't bend conduit," some holding apprentice licenses only.

Three things a real journeyman does that a laborer can't:

1. Plans before he works. He reads the sheet, walks the run and pulls his material list before he cuts pipe.
2. Does the math in his head. Offsets, shrink, take-up, box fill and conductor count without asking.
3. Fixes what he finds. When the field doesn't match the prints, he catches it, solves what he can and tells the foreman about the rest.

02The day-one checklist

Print this and hand it to whoever runs the phone screen and the bench test. "Without help" means he does it with no more than a question or two.

On verifying dead, OSHA's general industry rule has a qualified person use test equipment to confirm a circuit is de-energized, including a check for backfeed (OSHA 1910.333). A journeyman does that without being told.

The quick checks come from three places: the phone screen, the bench test and the reference calls. The bench layout is in the 30-minute electrician skills test. The questions to ask before he ever comes in are in the journeyman phone screen.

03What changes by kind of work

The core list holds everywhere, but each kind of work adds its own must-haves. Screen for the work you actually have.

Commercial

Commercial journeymen live in EMT, MC and prints. Add these:

• Racks of parallel offsets and 90s that look like one piece
• Branch circuits and homeruns to the panel schedule, circuits labeled
• Ceiling coordination with other trades and the GC's schedule
• Fire alarm or low-voltage rough-in if your shop does it

One small commercial-industrial shop on the Mike Holt forum (15 to 20 hands, mostly two-man journeyman and apprentice van crews) put it plainly: the journeyman is the foreman on those crews, and applicants "all say they can, but most can't" (Mike Holt Forum). On small crews, a journeyman has to run work alone.

Industrial power and controls

Industrial work adds controls and heavier pipe. The contractor who gave us the spec above described their work in three words: "power, controls, raceways." Add these:

• Rigid conduit and threading, and cable tray
• Motor terminations, including three-phase T-lead hookups for both high and low voltage
• Control wiring from a schematic: across-the-line starters, overloads, start-stop stations
• VFD and control panel terminations, wire numbering and labeling
• Loop checks and insulation testing before start-up

Trade testers on the Mike Holt forum suggest the same checks: T-lead hookups, drawing an across-the-line starter with overloads and a start-stop station, and what happens on a lifted neutral (Mike Holt Forum).

Service

Service is a different hire. The checklist shifts from production to troubleshooting and people:

• Finds the problem with a meter and explains it in plain words
• Keeps the truck stocked and the paperwork clean
• Talks to a homeowner or a building manager without causing a callback

As one forum owner put it, "A great service electrician is harder to get," and the first thing he screens for is someone who "wont cause problems with the customer" (Mike Holt Forum).

04A 5-year hand vs a 10-year hand

Expect more from a 10-year journeyman, and price him that way. Here's what each should handle without help. These are field expectations. Some 6-year hands run circles around 15-year ones.

The contractor's "five to seven years" asks for the left column with some of the right. At the top of your pay band, you should be getting most of the right column. How rate tracks with those skills is in why journeyman pay runs from $40 to $80 an hour.

05What the license tells you, and what it doesn't

A journeyman card tells you he logged the hours and passed the exam. It doesn't tell you he can do the list above. Most electricians train through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship with about 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training a year, and most states require a license (BLS). That's the floor. The skills check is on you.

Two habits close the gap:

1. Check the class on the state board, every time. An apprentice or trainee registration looks a lot like a card in a photo. The lookups are in how to verify an electrician's license in any state.
2. Watch him work for 30 minutes before you hire him. A bench test catches the bending and troubleshooting gaps a card hides. If you need a third-party check, NCCER offers a journey-level Commercial Electrician assessment that contractors use for "verifying journey-level competency before deployment" (NCCER).

Don't expect him to know every code section number. Section numbers move between NEC editions, and as one poster on the Mike Holt forum put it, "never trust a guy who says he remembers all the numbers" (Mike Holt Forum). Expect him to know the rule and where to find it.

06How to use this list in the first week

The checklist works after the hire too. Give it to his foreman and have him mark each line by Friday of week one:

1. Green: did it without help.
2. Yellow: did it with a question or two.
3. Red: couldn't do it, or did it wrong.

Three or more reds on core lines (bending, terminating, prints, safety) by the end of week one is time to sit down with him. Don't wait it out. A foreman who knows what to watch for can make the call within the first 90 days.

If you're short-handed now, apply here and we'll see if we can put 5 licensed electricians in front of you in 14 days.

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