Currents of Change: Zack Hartle on Competing, Teaching, and Empowering the Industry

 In this episode, we sit down with Zack Hartle, a Skills Canada Alberta alumnus, two-time gold medalist in Industrial Control, Electrical Trades Instructor at SAIT, and co-host of the Watts the Word podcast. Zack shares his inspiring journey from competing in Skills competitions to representing Canada at WorldSkills Germany, and how those experiences shaped his career path. Now a Provincial Technical Committee member and passionate educator, Zack discusses launching a podcast with Jason Cox to spotlight the electrical industry, creating a YouTube channel to support learners, and what it means to give back to the trades community. Tune in for insights, inspiration, and a look at how one competitor became a leader, mentor, and advocate for skilled trades. 

Podcast: https://www.wattsthewordpodcast.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ZackHartle

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Skills and Thrills, Alberta's Trade and Tech Youth Podcast My Skills Canada, Alberta. We feature the stories of skills alumni through sharing their competition experiences and how those moments shape their careers. Through casual, unscripted conversations, we explore the journeys behind the skills and the paths that followed. I'm Danny and I'll be your host. Let's dive into today's episode. Today we have Zach Hartle, co-host of What's the Word, electrical trades instructor at SAIT and Skills alumnus joining us today. Zach, thank you so much for joining us on the Skills Pod. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Oh, I'm doing great. Yeah, it's a good day. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Can you start by telling us about your journey in electrical and how you got started with skills?

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah. It's a little bit of a cliche here. A lot of people in the trades talk about it, but I did fall into it. I was a rap student, so the registered apprenticeship program. I had a friend in high school, knew he wanted to be a carpenter. So he did it for carpentry. And I said, Oh, well, I don't love school. I can go make some money. Talked with my guidance counselor and ended up being placed at an electrical company because they were hiring. Turned out I loved it. So that's when I got into the trade. I worked at the same company for until I came to state 10 years later. And that's kind of how I got into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

That's awesome. Did you have like a mentor that really helped you get into it?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

I didn't have like a mentor so much. I wanted to try it. My dad is a mechanic. My mom was very supportive of doing whatever I wanted to do. As long as I did something to me, which I think was a good message. And yeah, so no mentor specifically, but yeah, once I got in, I learned how much I liked it, right? It was something new, it was different things. It was working with people who were much older than me at the time. I was 16 when I started. So I kind of had no one specific mentor, but it was a lot of these people I could see. And you could see the people who took it seriously, took it as a career, they had done well for themselves. You could look up to multiple people around you and see different options that the trade would give.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

It's really cool to learn from a bunch of people as you continue on your journey, like in the trades and stuff, because everyone has like a different way of doing things too. So yeah. So what year did you participate in skills?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

I competed the first time in 2009 in industrial control. Back then it was called automation and control.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Wasn't that the year that we did World Skills Calgary?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Yes, it was the year of World Skills Calgary. It was kind of cool. I wasn't ever like I obviously didn't compete in World Skills Calgary, but yeah, it was cool. I was doing my first year apprenticeship school, and we were able to go down and visit the World Skills competition. Looking back, I wish I took in more of it. I was a 18-year-old kid with who didn't really know a whole lot. So we kind of went and looked. It's a big event at the Stampede Grounds. That's cool. I didn't take a lot away from it. And it wasn't until after school that I got the call and they're like, hey, do you want to compete in skills? And I was like, Oh yeah, that's that thing that I went to. Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah. That's still cool though, because you got to see the event and everything, and it kind of set you up for what the environment was going to be like and all that.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

So that's the Yeah, we didn't go with any direction of this is what you're supposed to get from it or take from it. It was just that, hey, you have the afternoon off, go to the Stampede Grounds, check out World Skills. So it was kind of uh interesting in that respect.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yeah, oh, that's so cool. We're hoping in the next like decade we'll have World Skills here again because that'd be so fun to have it like in Alberta again. It'll be great.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Yeah, it's such a big event. Nobody can understand the scope of the event until they've been to one.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

It's huge. There's so many different areas and everything. All the skills you could think of are there.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

So yeah, even just provincials and nationals. Like I brought my wife to Quebec City last year for her first ever time at a skill, and she was just like blown away. I've been danced skills since 2009 as a competitor or a trainer. And it's still just like you just can't comprehend until you're in the building with 8,000 people walking around seeing it, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, it's an incredible event. Going back to you competing, for sure. Can you take us through what it was like to prepare for that competition?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

I don't know if my story is typical or not. I kind of misunderstood when I was competing. It was a little bit of a weird thing. I got a back then it was a little bit less post-secondary sponsored and a little bit more through Alberta industry training or apprenticeship, whatever they're called, AIT. Um, so I didn't really know. I actually thought I was competing in electrical installations. So, you know, I brought my residential wire strippers and I practiced some of that work and I got to the competition site and they're like, oh, do you have your programmable logic controller in your laptop? And I was like, oh, I don't, I don't know what that is. I have no idea. So it was kind of one of those. And then I guess one of my coolest experiences there was a provincial technical committee member there who really just sat me down and said, Look, like, you don't know what's going on here. Can we take a little bit of time and show you what's going on? It may make it so you can't necessarily finish the competition or something like that. He steered me in that direction, showed me what it was, and then yeah, I couldn't wait to go back the next year once I knew how everything was. So, I mean, preparation, whether I did the right prep or the wrong prep, I guess, is just really focusing on what is that contest description, how do you complete those tasks. For me, the work I was doing, I didn't do all of those tasks. So I went out of my way to talk to people I work with in the field, journeyman and stuff like that, about how do I do this? How do I strip Lumex? How do I wire a smoke detector? How do I do these things that I've never done before? Skills teach us so much. It's so cool what it can teach our competitors because the competitions are four years worth of learning in a two-day competition. There's so much there. No apprentice coming in has done it all. They all have to learn something before coming to the competition.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Agreed. I feel like it's such a good way to gain more skills and really hone your craft and your trade. Can you tell us the difference between industrial control and electrical?

SPEAKER_02 6:10

The electrical installations is your residential and your commercial installations that you would see like electricians who typically live in a city or a town, right? And then industrial control is a little bit more of an automated, specialized process that you might find in oil and gas. One of the examples we use at the competition a lot is luggage sorting at an airport. So using a lot of inputs and outputs to a computer to run an automated process.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Cool. I was talking about that with Chelsea and I was like, that's so cool, but it sounds so complicated. I'm like, oh my gosh. And like you have to make sure it programs well on the computer.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

I always use the example of a car, right? When you get in a car and press the lock button, it's not that the lock button is connected to all four of my locks, right? The lock button on my door is connected to the computer in the car. So it tells the computer, lock the door. Computer then sends a signal out to all four locks, lock, lock, lock, lock. It sounds like it's very complicated, but in a way it's it's called a logic controller because it's very logical. It's very much like a flow chart. This results in this and this. This results in this. If I don't do this, then this happens. So it's a very logical sequence. Once you can wrap your head around that logical sequence, it actually isn't the hardest thing to program, except for the 12-hour time crunch of the competition makes it pretty tough.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, and just getting it done in that time frame and then making sure it all works too.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Yeah, exactly. Right. If you can get yours energized and start testing, you've done very well. It's a hard of like almost a brutal competition, but which is good.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

It sets you up for your career later on. Did you come across any challenges during your competition?

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Other than the first year where I completely trained and prepared for the wrong competition, which now looking back, I'm like, oh, I probably should have listened more on the phone to random person I didn't know, but it's all good. It turned out awesome. I'm so happy it turned out the way it did. I just got to learn so much more. If I would have gone into electrical installations, um, it was just what I did every day. So it didn't push me out of my comfort zone. The first year competing at skills was my first real push outside of my comfort zone in the trade, and it made me want to continuously learn more. I didn't even know that industrial control was under the scope of work of an electrician. So that was a real big eye-opener for me. So that was kind of the biggest challenge. I competed four times at provincials because I was lucky to be so young when I started. The biggest challenge for me was training on equipment that I often didn't work on every day. By the time I got into my third and fourth competition, I was starting to work on a little bit more of that in my day job. But that was just kind of the biggest challenge was, you know, I would work for 10 months of the year and then skills training time would come around. And it's like, okay, now instead of thinking one way, now I have to think about this completely different way of making things work.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Yeah. And you have to do it in a very specific way based on like the rules and like what the project is and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

So there's that two sides to skills, right? It's a real world competition, and at the same time, we're there to go to a competition just like, eh, whatever happened. I was super fortunate. My trainer, it was an instructor at SAIC. He's still there, Derek Olin. He knew how to win. He was a very good trainer. He's got an incredible record. So he trained us to win. You know, this is how you do this quickly, accurately. Maybe not how you'd actually do it in the field. So there's that cool crossover of how do we make it the most efficient, the most accurate possible. So it's almost turns into like, I mean, I was gonna say a game, but I guess a competition, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yeah. Well, I feel like it kind of is a game because you're trying to figure out how to do it the best way you can more efficiently and everything, so you could win.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

So exactly. There's some stuff that we do at competition that you would just not do in the real world because oh, it saves me 10 minutes at competition. Well, 10 minutes in the real world often isn't a big deal, but saving 10 minutes because you have a better wire stripper at the competition, 10 minutes is huge. That's time to label everything, that's time to vacuum, that's time to straighten, especially when you get into that worlds level, which I'm sure we're gonna talk about. Like one minute is time, one minute is points. You don't waste a single minute, right? You take a bottle with a straw because you're not gonna waste time picking up and unscrewing a water bottle to take a drink. Like those are the thought processes the further up you get. So very cool in that respect.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, literally every minute counts. You really gotta time management and be like, okay, I need to do this then, and then you know, it continues. So um, but do you mind talking to us about how nationals and world schools was so different from provincials?

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Yeah, of course. So yeah, they're they're a progression, right? Things have changed provincially and nationally over the years, and I think everyone is trying to align more to worlds. If the end goal is to compete and have a strong showing at worlds, we should try and set competitors for that. I'm lucky now I'm on the provincial technical committee for industrial control. So I have helped steer the provincial competition a little bit. They just get a little bit more difficult as time goes on. So I would say that although they're both 12-hour competitions between provincials and nationals, there's about 30% more at nationals. So there's a little bit more difficulty in the actual programming of the controller, there's a little bit more equipment on the wall. And that's about it, right? Other than that, we do that on purpose. We want to have our provincial competitors set up for success at nationals. When they win at provincials and we have a three, four-week period between provincials and nationals, we can train on that extra 30% of stuff. And then worlds is just different. Like it's night and day because the big factor in our trade specifically is that it's all European standards at Worlds. So the colors of wires are different. The insulation on the wire feels differently when you strip it. The screws are Torques or Phillips, they're not Robertson. It's just like these little subtle things, and that's the biggest part. It's a four-day competition instead of two, and it's over double of the nationals for sure. Um, but it's not unmanageable. I think once you overcome those little hiccups. A big one we had recently was like keyboard. You wouldn't even think about bringing the right keyboard, but in Germany, apparently they use different keyboards than we do here in Canada. So that was the hiccup we ran into at World Skills where we went to in uh over in Austria. So it's those little hiccups, and then the the focus that's required in the training, right? Your document goes from being 10 pages long to 25 or 30 pages. And then there's also a little bit of a language barrier at competition, right? So when read technical committee members are talking, sometimes it's in a different language, and then there's translators. So it just adds all these little extra elements that almost make it more fun, but also, of course, more of a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Yeah, it'd be really challenging to kind of adapt that way, to use a different keyboard and do things a little bit differently and learn a few other things that are different. Did you do that as you as you went, kind of?

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah. So I mean, for my personal journey, right? When I did win nationals in 2012 and Edmonton and got the chance to go to Leipzig, Germany, I was fortunate enough. My company was very supportive. So I trained full-time for three months straight before the competition. Derek, my trainer, was so good working with an electrical wholesaler in Calgary. They literally brought equipment from Europe to Calgary to train with. So that when I went to Europe to compete, I knew I had the right wire, I had the right tray, I was using the proper materials. It's funny how when you just look at it, you're like, oh, it's the same. But even though the plastic tray, the wire mold or wire tray, it cuts differently. Ours is more pliable and flexible, where theirs is more rigid. So theirs can like snap and break a lot. It's just it's a different material, even though you look at it and you're like, it's the same, right? But it's it's all different. And that was to me the biggest thing going from nationals to a world stage. You're no longer in your element, you're in someone else's element, right? So I that's kind of the the biggest thing and then the scope, the scale of competition. You go from 8,000 people to more than 8,000 people around you. Like it's the scale of competition is so much bigger, right? We're used to five to ten competitors in industrial control provincially and nationally. There's 25 or 30 on the world stage. So just the scale of our even our own event is three times larger.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yeah. Wow, that's a lot. Did you learn anything from other competitors at World Skills while you were there?

SPEAKER_02 14:38

You don't get a big chance to meet people. There was a few people I stayed in touch with for a couple years after, like on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. But there was cool, like maybe not technically learning skills, but just sitting down at lunch with these guys from you know, Sweden and Germany and all these places, and just like chatting about their jobs and how their apprenticeship system differs from Canada's apprenticeship system or what they went through. It just that the approach that every country takes is so absolutely different. It's right, wrong, doesn't matter, but just the approach that every country takes is so different, right? It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

That's so interesting to child people like around the world who are in the same career as you and just yeah, talking to them about their journey with it all. And yeah, that's really really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

One really cool thing is in a lot of other countries and cultures, like tradespeople are it's like a desired career, right? If you are chosen to be an electrician or chosen to be an industrial control, that is to looked at as a positive thing there. There's no stigma towards trades in a lot of these other countries, and that was what I found cool. Like there's these guys who, like, you know, were I guess would have been like high honor students in high school and had gone to university and then were given the opportunity to go work for an electrical company. And it seems like a different story about how these people got into the trades, and it's just the parody of esteem between like skilled trades and university degrees. It was kind of cool mix, right? Of that.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. I find like in Canada and the US, we're very pushed towards university from like childhood. Like trades is not like a huge talk like other countries. Um, so yeah, it's definitely an interesting worldview to see.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

I wonder part of it. Well, I had one recalling a conversation I had, this most recent world skills I was at in 2022 with someone in Austria, especially, is because their buildings are so old. They trust the most skilled professionals to work on their buildings because their buildings are just this cultural symbol, right? If the building gets wrecked, it's it's game over. Whereas for us, I mean, it feels in North America our buildings are almost treated as disposable sometimes. Right. But for them, they're three, 400-year-old buildings. If they're gonna put in lights or put in Wi-Fi even, well, they're not gonna trust anybody to do that. They're not calling the lowest bidder. Where here we kind of get into that more of, oh, I can save a couple hundred bucks hiring this electrician over this electrician. There's a reason things cost different amounts, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. It's like over there, it's it's way more honorable to be a really good skilled trades worker. Um, and yeah, just keeping that history there.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Everyone has a different opinion in Canada, right? Everyone's gonna have a different opinion of skilled trades.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

I guess it really depends on how you grew up in your community.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

For sure. And that's that's it. I mean, I was lucky my parents were supportive. My dad was a tradesperson, my mom didn't care what I did as long as I did something, right? The trades gave me that option, although I didn't technically really choose to be an electrician. It kind of did fall into my lap. I'm so grateful for it. It evolved into something so much more than just a job.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

It's such a great community, too. And then, yeah, just being a part of skills too, like it's just it's so much fun.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

I'm grateful all the time. I still have the chance to be involved with skills. It's been 16 years this year. Technically, I've been a part of the Skills Oprah of a family, right? Going from competitor to PTC member, and now I'm on a chair of the PTC committee. Like, it's pretty cool to come full circle. I've trained a competitor to go to a world skills. I've gone to a world skills myself. I've been involved in a lot of different aspects of it, and it's still so cool. It's still so every year at the competition, competition day one at 11 a.m. when everyone's just going full tilt, there's still that feeling that you get, and it hasn't gone away yet. It's still pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah, it's so much fun. What inspired you to be a part of the PTC?

SPEAKER_02 18:36

So when I competed, the PTC members were great. What I found is that there was a really big disconnect between our provincials and nationals and then the world stage. They used a lot of different materials. They didn't even use a lot of industrial control materials when I started. It was a little bit more using the materials of like a commercial or residential installation to get an industrial control result.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

So using like a typical standard cable to hook up a limit switch. Well, you would never use that cable to hook up that device in the real world. So it just didn't quite mesh. My trainer, Derek, asked me if I wanted to join. So I was still working in industry at the time, and my company was okay with it. That was one of the reasons, just to stay involved. Derek asked me if I'd join and help out, and I was available and I could and I wanted to give back. I mean, to him, to skills. So I kind of joined, and I think I've been a member since then. So some years more active than others, of course, but yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

It's so cool to make your competition happen and and do like, I don't know if you do judging or just like being there, the competitions and stuff like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

I competed in worlds in 2013. There's other people I competed with on the PTC now.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Like Denis on industrial design or whatever it's called, right? I competed with him. I traveled around Europe with him for three weeks after the competition in Europe. Like we were just so close back then and you know, lost touch. And then last year at a PTC meeting, it was like just rekindled this old friendship. It was pretty cool. And you know, he asked these people the same thing, like, oh, what brought you back? Well, you just miss it. Like there's just a little bit of a rush being at the competition. Doesn't seem to matter what side of the fence you're on.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Oh, that's so cool that you're on the PTC with other people that you like went around the world with. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

And now with like Chelsea joined our PTC as well, right? And it's yeah, it's yeah, the cool thing I'm like really enjoying about the PTC lately is like, and that as the chair now, it's my second year as the chair, there's stuff people don't like doing, and there's stuff people like doing. So if we have a bigger group of volunteers, everybody can just work on what they want to work on. You want to do drawings, do drawings. You want to order material, order material, right? Try and make it so that nobody on the PTC, I mean, you're a volunteer, work on what you want to work on. What is your part of competition that you want to work on? What do you want to get better at, right? You can use it as skill building. So we're really trying to aim for that and trying to make it as efficient as possible.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Like volunteering shouldn't be work. It should be fun. Then I think skills does a really good idea with that. And I think we're trying to foster that more in the technical committee. There's double the members now as there was like four years ago, just in our own trade 19 industrial control technical committee, and it's so much easier, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

It's a lot of work, but it's so much fun, and it's so worth it seeing all the kids and everything and watching the competitors. It's just such a good time every year.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yeah, it's like I I tell everyone if you can go, you want to go day one, just before lunch or just after lunch, if the hustle and bustle, like day two, people are tired, some events wrap up around two or whatever, but like day one, man, everybody's dialed in. It's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah, it's so much fun. I can't wait. Um, do you have advice for future competitors?

SPEAKER_02 22:02

I mean, a piece of advice that you may or may not be able to take is start as early as you can. Right. And like I was so lucky that I was young, and that experience, not even so much the experience of the installation, but just the experience of trying to work in an area where there's distractions, hundreds of distractions. Like you're trying to compete, and there's people running around talking, there's radios going off, there's saws over there, there's junior high and high school, kids goofing around, there's hula hoops everywhere. Like it just it's wild, right? So that'd be some advice is try and figure out what works for you for focus. For me, I had to wear earplugs. Like I couldn't compete without earplugs, and I found that worked for me. The other thing is just it's a learning experience. Yes, you want to go to win. You never know. You could show up. There's 10 competitors, you don't know the skill set of every other competitor. So train as hard as you can, focus on yourself, make yourself proud.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

The result is secondary. I mean, you want to learn, you want to finish, you want to do X, Y, Z. Don't work focus too much on, oh, I need a gold medal. Because you know what? Sometimes it's in the cards and sometimes it's not. So that's kind of my thing. It's just focus on yourself. Don't look at other competitors' stations, do the best that you can, do your best time management, focus on yourself. Same with training, just absorbed, read that contest description, right? If there is some type of test project or pre-learning or pre-reading, read it. Because yeah, you they'll probably have it available at the competition, but you won't have time. So that's that would be my advice is yeah, focus on yourself during competing and just have fun and don't worry about it too much. It's fun, you're there to learn, right? If you go into the mindset of I'm only there to win, you might be disappointed. If you go say I'm gonna learn and try to win, you're not gonna be disappointed. You'll learn something guaranteed.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Agreed. So you're an instructor at SAIT, which is awesome. Can you tell us what led you to be an instructor and was that always your goal?

SPEAKER_02 23:57

No, wasn't my goal. Never thought about it either way. I mean, didn't say I didn't want to be one or did. It's funny, I mean, it's weird how intertwined skills has ended up being within my whole career, but my previous trainer, Derek from State, just called me one day and said, Hey, we're hiring, you should apply. I would have been a journeyman for three or four years in the field, maybe five. And I was like, Yeah, I don't know. I was kind of having a bad day at work, right? Outside in the cold and like which wasn't often. Not saying it's a common occurrence in the trades, but having a bad day. That day, all right, sure. So that I just applied. I'd only worked for one company. I didn't have to interview for them because I had got the job through the rap. I was a rap student. So I was like, yeah, worst case scenario, I do an interview at a grown-up job and try it and see how it works. And yeah, so in a way, that's that's how it happened. It basically just fell into my lap. And I knew that I liked training, I knew that I liked helping people, I knew that I liked working with students, and I knew I liked training and working with apprentices in the field, mentoring them. So I did think it would be an okay fit. I didn't really know what to expect. But yeah, applied and interviewed and got the job. And now it's been almost 10 years I've been there.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Well, that's awesome. Do you have any apprentices that you're training right now?

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Yeah, we're training. So we usually start end of March or middle of March to train. This year we are training state. We can trade, we're training like six between trade 18 and trade 19. Closer to competition, we do our own little mock competition to see who gets to go to the real competition. Uh we're lucky this year we had a lot of competitors. Some years it's a little bit harder to find competitors. This year we were fortunate we found lots of competitors. So we're just about to start training here in a couple days.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Do you use a lot of your experience from skills to help them do things differently?

SPEAKER_02 25:53

I am constantly recalling the tips and tricks taught to me by Derek as I am training these competitors, right? I have the same mentality. We want to do it as efficiently as possible. We want to learn something, we want to have fun, and we want to try and win if we can. So, yeah, lots of those tips and tricks. And I mean, the biggest thing and the most rewarding thing for competing is experience. If you can do it one year and then come back the next, it is night and day. Even if your skill sets haven't changed, just your ability to work under that pressure. You're not in awe. You don't spend 10 minutes looking around with your mouth open, like what is happening right now, right? And I've struggled as a trainer, we can't really recreate that. You cannot create the energy and the atmosphere of a skills competition. When you've sat up down in like an atrium at seat and let other students walk by, put them in the hallway to work over to lunch period. Like they just we've tried different things and nothing can just recreate that urgency and that required focus on that energy that's in that room. But yeah, yeah, as many tricks as possible. We are yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah, that's great to just like really set them up for that. Cause I know a lot of people I've talked to so far on the podcast say that that first year they competed was like a blur because they didn't know what to expect really, and it was just a lot of commotion and just trying to focus on your stuff. But the next year they were like prepared for it.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah. Well, I think a little bit of it is the knowing what to expect.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Right? Like, so we also we do talk with our competitors a lot about that. You're gonna show up on day one, we're PTC members, we can't really talk to you too much, but like you'll come in, we'll start at eight, you'll sit down at a table, we'll have an orientation for 20 minutes, you'll get a chance to go to your workspace and sort out your tools, just so they're not going in blind. So in their head, they know, oh, after this, I get to sort my tools. So they're not stressed about, oh, did I bring my wrench or something like that the whole time? They know the daily process. We try and make it as clear as possible to the students this is this, you'll get lunch. Like we get asked that question every year. Is there gonna be a lunch? Yeah, yeah. Every year. Yeah, we're not uh we're not working for seven hours straight here. There we'll take a lunch break. It's just funny. It's just that knowing if you don't know what to expect, you're constantly thinking about I wonder what's next. Whereas if you know what to expect, you can focus on the moment a little more.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah, that's true. And I mean, since you've been through it, you can definitely set them up as much as you can. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Yeah, I am I I am super fortunate. I don't get to work with our competitors as much as I maybe want to. It's a real big time commitment to train. Like I think that that might go underappreciated or misunderstood is like there's we have a really good group of instructors that volunteer a ton of hours for industrial control and electrical. It's evenings, it's weekends. People don't understand what it takes to train these competitors to be successful unless they're part of it. I don't get to spend as much time with the competitors. I have two little kids at home, but I get to do a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff and work with the PTC. And that's all stuff I really like too. But I definitely make an effort to get in and like spend a couple Saturdays with the competitors and just get that experience, right? How do we make it more efficient? It's all about efficient. If I pick up this tool once, that's the only time. It's not like a job site where you pick up your saw, you cut something, you put it down, you do this, you go back, you know, you cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, put on the wall, put on the wall, put on the wall. But like you're picking up a tool, you're using it, you're putting it away, you're done with it. It's all about that little bit of efficiency. It's the biggest piece that we work on as well, other than the technical print reading and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

That's definitely one of those more important things, efficiency, doing it in the time constraint that you do have at skills.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Yeah, I think that is like, I mean, to go back a little bit to how to advise people to prepare. Like if you can get more efficient, you can spend more time doing things, which is a regret. Like, if I am more efficient at measuring and cutting, well, then I have more time for planning, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:43

It's really good advice. I feel like it's just a good thing to work on in preparation for any competition, I think, because every competition has that time constraint.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

I mean, every competition is gonna be so different, right? What is gonna be the most important thing? I know for industrial control, the skill set is one thing, yeah. need a lot of logic, you need a lot of print reading skills, but because our competition is so heavy, biggest one for us is time management. You could tell the, you know, you could have two competitors equally as skilled if one is way more efficient with their time, yeah. They're gonna do a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

His time is 15 minutes in our competition is huge, right? When you're talking about 700 wire terminations, well, 15 minutes could be 50 of them, right? Like that's a that's a big chunk. And if you don't have them all done, nothing is gonna work.

unknown 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

No, it's really good advice. Moving into your podcasts, what's the word with Jason Cox? Do you mind talking a little bit more about your podcasts and how you got started with it?

SPEAKER_02 30:43

For sure. So I I mean I've been in the trade for almost 20 years, 18 years, I guess. There's so much to learn, right? There's so many different avenues. You can learn technical abilities, you can learn soft skills. It's a people job as much as it is a technical ability job. And when I left the field to go to say, I stopped learning some things, right? Like I no longer got to have those relationships with wholesalers and with customers and learning about new niches in the industry is very much focused on the fundamental skills that are required to do your job. And we spend all day teaching these technical you know series circuits, parallel circuits, how this machine works, how that machine works. And I was kind of missing that little bit of the soft skill skide and the people side or the relationship side of the trade. It's so broad, right? People are like, oh, I'm gonna be an electrician. I don't want to pull wire in 20 years. Well the trade is full of opportunity. They all are so the point of the podcast is to learn. I love learning new stuff and also just to maybe show people what are the opportunities out there. Right. So we try and have guests on like we'll have safety people on we brought in someone from the IBW union. I never worked union. I know nothing about it. So it's cool to just learn about it. We've had solar on we get entrepreneurs on Chelsea came on to talk about her experience with skills just anyone and everyone who has something cool to say in the trade that I think would be interesting to myself when I was a journeyman electrician in the field who'd worked at one company for eight years, right? And I yeah I'm grateful for that company but my scope of knowledge of the trade was pretty narrow because they did one type of work. So yeah just what are the opportunities of the trade, right? We've had people who are experts on electric shock talking about the long-term effects of electric shock, talking about arc flash yeah just kind of all over the map we're working on different episodes now with Milwaukee Tools, with thermal imaging companies yeah just stuff we want to know about people are more willing to tell you about stuff apparently if you record them awkwardly on a Zoom call.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

That's so funny yeah I mean yeah I love your podcast I think it's awesome. I listened to the Chelsea episode and I think the the episode of you talking about your time at world skills and just skills in general um yeah it was it was great.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

So go ahead and check that out guys I think it's on all platforms or yeah it's everywhere it's What's the word electrical industry podcast pink and blue check it out we're working on some new episodes right now and it's slow like as you probably know in starting this one like there's a lot more work than I thought there would be it's not harder. It's just like there's just a lot of little things big thing for us is scheduling right myself and Jason have busy schedules plus our guests so we we work a little bit harder on the scheduling side it's a little can be a little bit tricky but regardless it's so much fun. It's so interesting to learn sometimes it's easy to edit sometimes it's hard to edit but yeah it's been pretty cool. I um I started a YouTube channel during COVID with instructing and it was just super helpful and I guess I learned I enjoy maybe not as a job but I just enjoy that content creation. It's an easy way to do something once or twice and give back countless times. I still use a lot of that YouTube stuff even in the classroom or outside of the classroom and the podcast is just kind of stuff you can't learn in a classroom. Yeah at Utain Electrianship program, but stuff I think all apprenticeships should know a little bit about because lots of people you know we see students third year, fourth year they don't know what they want to do in two years or four years or five years. I work a one I say you know betrayed as opportunity just because you're an electrician you come out of school as a journeyman electrician well it's in a year or two years what if you want to be an estimator a project manager and that so we working on those soft skills is a big thing and that'd be advice to all apprentices learn how to send an email with a subject and your name at the end is a first step.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yeah there's there's other skills you can learn that yeah can really really set you apart and everything. So for sure yeah um but yeah going back to your YouTube channel so I checked that out that was awesome is it just another way for you to teach your students like during COVID and yeah it's a little bit of both everyone learns different I'm guilty of this myself I don't have a really long attention span.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

If I'm bored I'm not listening right so sometimes sitting in a classroom listening to an instructor talk about a topic for 90 minutes, I drift off right or so the point of YouTube was a lot of it is some of it's like extra topic like to go above and beyond what we need to in the classroom but a lot of it's just quick you know what would have taken an hour in class as an example. It's a 15 minute example a 10 minute example on YouTube. You can play and pause it's at your own speed it's great for review it's great if you're coming back from second year to third year or third year to fourth year. And it's like oh my gosh it's been four years since I went to school. Right. And that's where I'm seeing the biggest benefit kind of now as we transition back to the classroom after COVID. I mean we're back now it's kind of in the past but that first year back a lot of students chose not to do online learning. It's not for them they didn't want to do it. They didn't want to sit on a computer all day at home. So they've been four years, five years out of school well when you come to school it kind of picks up where it left off. So if you don't have some type of resource to catch up, those first two weeks of school can be miserable.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

So that's one of the biggest benefits I'm finding now and um yeah there's a couple other like there's a bunch of instructors who kind of have the same thing going between all of us we have this huge library this collection of just supplemental like you're not gonna learn the whole course from it but it's those little tricky topics that maybe you just need one more example.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

But the class is moved you know that was last week right life happens you get to like it's also good like if you miss a class here's something I can provide you that's not a textbook that's not a ask your friends right so yeah it's kind of good I mean it's yeah it's just fun different yeah no I mean it's great.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

A lot of people are visual learners it's nice to have something to look back on if you're studying or if you just want to know something that maybe you don't know yet in the trade. It's good to just watch a video and and learn that thing.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

Some students really want more examples. Some students want to have more conversation about why things are the way they are this kind of lets me have that group conversation in the classroom and then hey if you want supplemental examples here's some on a piece of paper that you can do or here's some videos or we even have it say lots of like online activities and stuff like on the internet on online. So it's just it's just another option.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Yeah I mean that's that's great to have it's always good to have options when you're a student and you have to work too and it's it's busy. Are there any other exciting projects you'd want to work on in the future I I've just trying to work on what comes to me.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

I've been working I was putting a lot of energy into YouTube for a while and now I'm putting a little bit of energy into my podcast. I just joined the community association where I live it's like a director of facilities and technology to use some of my skills from being a contractor to give back to the community a little bit like focusing on that building maintenance. I don't have any big visions or goals I love just always using my skills and trying to learn more things right so it's always about everything's an opportunity and that's how I look at the trade and I'm a big skilled trades like I everyone should try it. Right. If you think trade might be for you give it a go. Yeah literally there's no bad from starting a trade even if you decide six months in this isn't for me, great. Guaranteed you learn something yeah you can spend a day on a construction site and you learn something. It doesn't have to be a career for everyone and I think that's maybe a little bit of the piece that's missing with some young people today is like I don't want to be an electrician in 10 years. Then tell try it now you like for me like I was like I'm an electrician what do they do I didn't know when I started but it turned out electrical I could have been a plumber. I could have been a like all of those trades I don't think for me it's the electrical trade that is the thing that kept me in I think it's the community around it the people like there's the instructors that are so good the you know the community of wholesalers and the companies and the people that you work with. It's just a community right everybody needs that community to feel like they belong and I think skilled trades can give that more than people expect. For me right now no big projects. I am involved in provincial skills quite a bit and just working on that podcast is kind of what I'm putting my content creation energy into now and see what happens. I mean electrical trade as a whole in Alberta is going through a wholesale curriculum change. So that's taking up a ton of energy of I mean every single postsecondary institute in the province all of their electrical faculty are swamped right now. So that comes into effect in September. It's probably the biggest change the trade has seen since it started what decades and decades ago like a whole revamp? Yeah so the the biggest factor I mean in the past it's been for the electrical apprenticeship it was eight weeks eight weeks eight weeks and then 12 weeks for your fourth year of schooling the biggest change now is they're making it eight weeks eight weeks ten weeks and 10 weeks so they're taking two weeks off fourth and shifting it to third and it's like oh well doesn't sound like a big deal because it's like oh just two weeks move but they're also rearranging a bunch of the content right um just to kind of group things a little bit better uh as well as in Alberta now electricians will be dual red seal so at the end of that four year technical training they'll have the ability to write the construction electrician and the industrial electrician red seal which is new for Alberta we've always held firm at one red seal but most of the rest of the country has gone to two so now to kind of align a little bit better with the rest of the country we're switching to two what's cool about ours is it'll be one apprenticeship whereas in Ontario it's actually two separate you can do one or the other in Alberta you do both. Oh wow just a lot of curriculum change work a lot of logistical work of scheduling and lab time and this and that so it's uh it's a big project but I think it's gonna be great for the trade especially for mobility throughout the country right yeah it sounds great just lots of restructuring for all the instructors out there what currently excites you the most about the work that you do so instructing is a it's a different uh game than working in the field you're always trying new things but you're not trying to change things huge because the way we do it works. So it's finding that fine line between what can I do that's innovative and new but helps the students more versus helping them less. So it's it's it's kind of just this constantly evolving instructional style, right? I want to try this in this course versus this in this course. Now that's what's cool about my current job as an instructor, right? I mean the the technical side of my job is at this point not that difficult, but it's how do I deliver this material? How can I provide a supplemental resource? And then it's also balancing it with the students' needs. Okay, well if I'm teaching them theory they also have a Transformers class and a motors class and a code class. How do we balance the workload between all four classes to not overwork the students or overwhelm them, but also to keep them engaged and challenged. So I don't I necessarily have a specific example but I mean for me it's I'm trying a lot to leverage technology. How can I leverage our learning management system to make it more efficient for students? How can I leverage the Microsoft Office suite? And that's also I try and leverage that to teach our students a little bit of the soft skills. Right. A lot of these students have never used Word or Outlook or OneNote. I try and bring it into the classroom without making them suffer because of it. I'll try and teach them a couple of these little skills because when we talk to employers that's what the employers are looking for is soft skills. You know the biggest thing is like if I have a customer call and this this apprentice answers the phone is are they putting a good face for it? If they answer an email is there going to be like you know and that's what I think the field doesn't teach sometimes and that's typically what technical training hasn't taught. So it's just kind of finding that sweet spot of how do we prepare these apprentices not just for technical success but how do we prepare them for career set them up for a career. So right try and get them into learning. So yeah that's kind of what I'm working on now. That's what excites me about my job and the cool thing about being an instructor there's a lot of autonomy. So I have a curriculum that I need to teach. The students are writing an exam on that curriculum I'll know if I'm doing a good job or not based upon those marks. But how I can go about it and how I can do it is like a personal challenge. You know, how do I do this? How do I want to present this? So that's what's cool about it. It is a little bit more flexible and personally I'm not great at writing questions. I cannot write exam questions or test questions or quiz I'm horrible at writing questions. But you know what? There's people who are really good at it but they're really bad at putting that question into the computer so that the student can use it as a learning tool. So it's really about collaborating with other instructors, finding people with different skill sets and working together. And I love that about the job. And then I mean summers off is pretty cool too.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yeah that's pretty nice I mean being a mentor and collaborating with others is so much fun.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

One of the things I choose to spend my time on is skills and that's great. Satis in full support of that right so yeah yeah it's great. Last question what is your favorite thing about your trade I've said this a bunch of times today and it's probably people are here if they listen to my podcast they're sick of me saying it but it's it's opportunity right if you you can do whatever you want in the trade. If you just want to go to work for eight hours a day and then go home at the end of the day and not think about anything and just run pipe or pull wire all day amazing and I I like not to get into the politics of trade but sometimes there's almost a stigma against guys within the trade who just want to do the work and go home. And I say that's ridiculous. We need skilled people who don't want to be a foreman don't want to be a project manager. They just want to come in and do a really good job at the work. They work hard once they're done work they play hard. We need those people like they are the they're incredible right that you just want to show up and do your job and make a really good paycheck and you know build some cool stuff you can be proud of I think the trade's really good to that. If you want to challenge yourself and move into an office role or move into safety or move into project management or you know go work out of town or go work in a different country or go into education like the opportunity sales, the wholesalers like all of that the opportunities are just there. And I I think that for me that's the paper part about not just my trade but like any trade. I don't think people see what's beneath the surface in terms of opportunity. I tell this to students all the time there's an ongoing joke or saying in technical training like oh 70 is 100 because if you get 70% you pass and you get your ticket. Yeah but when you go back if you three years down the road from graduating technical trade if you try and go back to university they don't look at your high school marks. They could not care less about what you did in high school. Now they want your postsecondary marks. So all of a sudden now you're 70 is a 70.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

Right? So that was I learned that myself I went back and did some business courses at university and stuff like that. And that was it shocked me because I'm like digging in and I sent in my high school transcripts and they replied they're like no no we want your journeyman electrician transcripts these are too old like give us something current that was a surprise to me and I was like yeah well that makes sense. Not everybody is who they are going to be when they're 18. Some people are but not everybody is who they're gonna end up being when they're in high school to me that's the trade is opportunity, right? You can I never worked out of town but I could have some people want to go make a ton of money and work out of town that's for you great it wasn't for me. I didn't do it that's how I'm trying to look at teaching at state as well it's an opportunity. I get to try lots of cool new stuff I can try new technology my time's a little bit more flexible where I can work on whatever I want to work on and that's what the goal is right yeah it's amazing. I mean opportunity there's so much you can do in the trades even in one trade there's so many different jobs you can do and that's that's it right you can do service deal with customers you can work on big projects you can work on mega projects you're like you know there's a lot of electricians who I know of talked to they want to go work at the new event center in Calgary it's gonna be like 400 electric it's enormous right it's one of the biggest projects in Alberta I'm like that is not for me. I have zero interest in going to the exact same place every day but that's what's cool about the trade you can choose what works for you. I loved service like the smaller projects dealing with customers you're in and out in one or two days or four hours or six it's more about planning and logical thinking but some guys they just want to see that mega structure they want to be involved in something big and that's the opportunity that trades gives you that I'm sure it exists in other jobs but it's so accessible in the trades right there's not as many barriers to get into the trade and then you can choose whereas I find a lot of other jobs you almost have to choose before you start. I have to choose what I want to do in university. Hopefully in eight years I like political science whereas with the trades you can start something and then you're like oh I want to get into influencing legislation in the province of Alberta well that's cool and that's something like I've a little bit on the side when getting into is getting a little bit more involved with the the AIT and the legislation side and Bill 67 and kind of that stuff that's happened in Alberta to me that's so cool. I can make such a huge impact in a whole province I'm an electrician to start. And from there I went somewhere else. I think it's cool.

SPEAKER_00 49:27

No that's amazing. It's so cool to see where you started and where you are now and how you've continued to grow within your trade.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

For me that's it it's an opportunity to grow and to learn and there could come a day where I say you know what I'm over teaching but I still have all of these other skills that I've collected along the way and I can go do something else. Yeah exactly right yeah teaching I think has enough opportunity. I think there's lots of people who start there and retire there. It's a great job it can be very fulfilling you just have to really dial in with how you can make that job your own and that's the same with trades. That's the same as starting your own company being an entrepreneur. Unfortunately I'm risk averse I'm terrified of so for me I was like I think I have the skill set to be an entrepreneur but I'm scared. So I didn't but I have close friends who did and right on like it's just so there's so much opportunity there, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Yeah. Yeah agreed. Well everyone be sure to check out what's the word it's on all platforms for podcasts. Make sure to check out Zach's YouTube channel as well if you're learning electrical industrial control. It's a great resource. And yeah thanks again for sharing your incredible story Zach. It was awesome to chat with you today.

SPEAKER_02 50:39

Yeah of course thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Thank you everyone for tuning in and we will see you in the next one thanks again for tuning in we hope you enjoyed today's episode and gained some valuable insights from our amazing guests. If you'd like to learn more about Skills Canada Alberta and our wide range of programs be sure to check out our website at skillsalberta.com from bringing skills right to your classroom to taking part in our competition programming there are countless ways to get involved and don't forget to follow us on social media at SkillsAberta to stay up to date on our latest episodes and events. See you in the next one