It is always exciting to move to a new career. Once you have discovered an industry that fascinates you, getting started is all you would want to do. However, in order to be successful in your career, you need to prep yourself up with the required skills.
The Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) field is rapidly growing each day. Tens of thousands of jobs for Careers in HVAC are added around the country each year for technicians. To get a strong foot-hold in this field, you must master a few essential skills.
You should know these nine skills and traits that can make you a fine technician:
Mechanical Skills : These skills will be taught during the training period, but it gets important for the HVAC technicians to be comfortable while working with mechanical system. HVAC technicians will need to assemble, disassemble, repair and program HVAC systems
Customer Service Skills : The technician will need to directly interact with the customers who call in due to an issue, so it becomes very important to have excellent service skills to handle them. The HVAC technician will need to interact with property manager, building superintendents and others.
Time Management Skills : This is another vital soft skill that is necessary to effectively manage a plan while remaining organized. They will have to do multiple high priority tasks each day.
Education : Technicians need to acquire a formal credential – diploma, HVAC certificate or degree. These courses can last anywhere from 7 months to 4-years.
Licenses : Depending on the state in which you are going to work as an HVAC technician, you may need to pass a state-held exam so as to get a HVAC license. However, few states don’t require license at all.
Certification : HVAC technicians who operate with refrigerants need to be certified for handling the same. This requires a special training and exam.
Physical Strength : This is an additional bonus because HVAC technicians might have to lift heavy parts, objects and equipment. So, one must be heathy and fit to carry out such daily tasks.
Detail-Oriented Nature : As mentioned earlier, for a HVAC technician to be successful in his field, he must stay highly organized. A detailed record must be maintained of the daily tasks such as the number of visits, the work that was done and equipment that was used.
Troubleshooting Skills : Most of the time, the technicians might receive a call about a faulty system before they can actually diagnose the issue. A good HVAC technician should be able to troubleshoot and detect the issue.