Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 402. Why Skills Competitions Matter for Refrigeration Technicians

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Episode 402. Why Skills Competitions Matter for Refrigeration Technicians · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 3: My name is Trevor Matthews, founder of RefrigerationMentor.com. Over the past decade, I've trained tens of thousands of refrigeration technicians and contractors on supermarket refrigeration, and I've seen the same problem across the industry. Technicians are under pressure, second-guessing, and getting stuck on jobs too long.
• 0:03
  And this is noth- nothing new. Less people have been coming in for a long time now. We've still been filling the gaps, but it continues to grow, like the gap starts to continue to grow more and more because there is a lot more refrigeration out there today than ever before, and so we need to fill the, the gap for the old equipment, the, and the new equipment.
• 0:06
  So and then there's some other coun- countries that have a lot of backing with that. So one of the things is, is that we need to raise more awareness about it. But what this does, like if every country takes refrigeration skills seriously, this raises standard for the entire trade, the entire industry.
• 0:09
  What, what this is though, there's a lo- a lot of this is on the apprentice, on the technician themselves. 'Cause I've talked to technicians and said they have to pay out of their own pocket, and some of them are like, "Well, I can't invest the money to do that. I can't afford, afford it," or, "My company's not paying."
• 0:12
  This is how we get our industry seen a bit more. But honestly, what this, these competitions are is, is training you under pressure because there's time limits on what you're doing, time limits on the piping, time limits on electrical, time limits on setting up diagnostics. You know what I mean? So it helps you be quicker, faster, work safely.
• 0:15
  This is, depends on where you're at, what is your, your code? Okay, but it was good for me to learn that because I, I think that's, that's the way it should be done. We don't wanna release any gas to the atmosphere. Now, it's different when we're talking about CO2 versus synthetic or chemical gases, right? So CO2, you can purge CO2 So there, there's different applications that you need to evacuate your hoses and some other ones where you don't need to evacuate hoses.
• 0:18
  I didn't look at the long, long-term picture, and that's what I really want you to look at. Look at the long-term picture. Because you know what? I always was able to pay for my bills. I was alwa- always able to figure out how to make more money, how to get more work, how to really fast-track myself. I did that And the thing is, you could do that too.
• 0:21
  They got a billion people, so I'm assuming there is a lot of refrigeration happening there. I know I talked with my friend Rob Ochs, when he goes to, to China when he went to China a lot, he said there are just some amazing things that they're doing in refrigeration there and how they're doing it.
• 0:24
  Because once again, this is a time investment. This is a money investment, and sometimes it's coming out of your own pocket. And when-- once again, when you're, when you're newer to the industry, it, it, it can be a little financial, financially tough because you're not making the, the highest wage that you could as when you're become a journeyman.
• 0:27
  The UK has their sc- national skills. A lot, a lot of different countries. Like, there's 60, 70 different countries that invest in it or a- at least have competitors now investing. I don't know, and that's something you wanna look up. Now, I think, I think just being aware of this is probably helpful. A- and hopefully this, th- this was either something new that you learned about, skills competitions for refrigeration and air conditioning technicians a- and maybe it's something that you wanna talk about with someone else.