A recent graduate of our solar Installation Basics Training (IBT) program, Alexis, was hired by a local solar company soon after graduating.
Alexis is a 32-year-old Sacramentan married father of one who commuted for 12 years to his job in the Bay Area as a hotel renovator. He only had Sundays off, so would only be able to come home Saturday evening and rest on Sundays. He was rarely home during the weekdays, and Alexis said he was ready for a change and looking for a job closer to home so he could be around more to enjoy his daughter’s childhood.
Pictured here: Alexis holding a piece of Electric Metallic Tube (EMT) Conduit during IBT.
He told GRID that “I never saw myself as skilled at anything,” but that the GRID IBT team “taught me the basics of solar panel installation, wiring, bending metal, and I seem to have a knack for it and it was fun, I enjoyed learning.”
Despite the program being only two weeks in person after completing a two-week distance learning course, Alexis said he learned a lot. “Any questions I or my other classmates had, they would answer and they would take their time to elaborate, I asked them to repeat themselves a few times and they were like, absolutely.”
Alexis said that the GRID team was “really focused on teaching you - it felt like they wanted me to do well, they wanted me to find a job, and they wanted me to succeed and do my own thing.”
The major skill he learned from GRID, he said, was “to be more confident in my own skills.”
“I was getting to the point where I was feeling like I couldn’t grow much more, and- in this [solar] industry, I already feel like there’s a lot of opportunities for me to grow not just as a worker but as a person. Like, hey, I could become a lead in a few months and then after that, I could become an electrician, and there might be more things I could do. Lots of opportunities to grow,” he told us.
Along with the shorter commute time, Alexis is enjoying the increased possibilities for career advancement. “It does seem like you can move up in this company fairly quickly as long as you do your best to learn. So it's exciting.”
If you’re interested in learning more about our IBT program, please email nvworkforce@gridalternatives.org.