(air whooshing) - Hey, I'm Danielle with Careers That Work.

Today, we're shining some light on the career path of an electrician.

(air whooshing) (air whooshing) (light music) - Hi, my name's Garrett Swartz.

I am the owner of Swartz Electric Enterprises.

(door clicking) Well, there's a bunch of different levels of becoming an electrician.

The path that I went was I started working for a company and learned a lot of what I know today just hands-on.

(door thumping) That was a few years ago.

Now there's a lotta classes, schools that are offering more hands-on training in the classroom, you know, book studies, like you know, formulas and stuff.

So like when you come to work here, say, at Swartz Electric, if you say you have like three years of schooling or two years of schooling, that's good, but the hands-on approach is sometimes totally different.

(air whooshing) (upbeat music) (air whooshing) So I did go to school, graduated local high school here.

I did go to Penn State for a year for psychology.

I don't know if I went because like everybody was doing it type of thing or what, but it wasn't for me.

So I did go to Johnson's College.

They had phase one and phase two courses that they offered for electrical.

So I got hired at like 22 for a family business that we knew through our local church.

And started working for them and learned a lot on the job.

And then, you know, I did go to school.

(air whooshing) (light music) (air whooshing) You know, when you see us driving around, like you know, you think, like you know, we're just screwing in light bulbs, but there's a big safety measure that we have to follow with the, you know, electrical code book.

(light music continues) From a service call to wiring a new house for somebody, like, there's a lotta things that, if the guys aren't trained properly and don't know what they're doing, there's a lotta potential for problems down the road.

I always wanted to have my own business or do something on my own, so that kept wearing on me for about five years.

And finally, you know, I was talking with my wife, and she said, "What do you have to lose at this point, you know?

Like why don't you do what you wanna do, pursue your dream?"

type of thing.

So I just wanted to be like my own boss, I guess you could say.

(machine whirring) I was 32 years old when I started, and it was just me for like the first year.

And then, I ended up getting a helper, a guy that I knew that I used to work with at an old company.

And then, he was helping me out for awhile.

And then he just became full-time.

He's double checking, but that's what he told me.

- [Colleague] Yeah, probably gonna need overhead.

- Yeah.

You know, you're kinda or responsible for six guys as far as like safety, payroll, feeding their family.

And the way I look at my employees, you know, it's we kinda become a family after awhile.

So like I look at them as just as important.

You wanna be good in the trades, plumber, HVAC, electrical, you know, go to classes, go to courses for it, but get into a job, get into a good company where you can learn experience.

And it's true like the more you know, the more of an asset you'll be for that company and the value you'll be worth.

(air whooshing) (light music) (air whooshing) (feet thumping) So what I like to do when I come back, the house is all finished, we're done 100% done with the job, I like to come back and sometimes just check the panels, make sure all the connections are tight, like the ground bars, everything's tightened down on that, the neutral bar.

Because loose connections, obviously, are not a good thing.

So I like to give it a once over.

So I like to take my screwdriver and make sure where they go down into the screw, that there's nothing loose.

And if they are, I'll stick this on and just give it a little turn to make sure they're tight.

(air whooshing) You know, if there's one thing I could say to whoever's out there that's 15 years old, 16 years old, in school, thinking about what you wanna do, it's like the pressure of going to college, which education's great.

The more you know, the better off you'll be.

But you know, the trades are really in need of people like you.

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