Hiring an Electrician

When you hire an electrician you want to make sure you are hiring a professional. For the most part your homes electricity is hidden away behind walls and under floors and is probably pretty invisible to you. Because you can’t see what’s going on to know when there is a problem, you want to ensure your electrician is highly skilled and trained to catch problems and fix them before they result in damage being inflicted to you or your home. 

The first step towards this goal is to look for an electrician who is licensed. There are still a few states in the union that don’t require their working electricians to be licensed but hopefully you don’t reside in one of those states and if you do you may want to ensure you only hire an electrician who is licensed regardless of state requirements. Electricity is complicated and a mistake handling it can be deadly so you don’t want to hire someone who doesn’t know what they are doing in this area.

Most likely you will encounter a wide variety of skills and backgrounds with the electricians you talk to. The majority of electricians are probably journeymen electricians. This classification means they have surpassed the training level and have gained enough skill and experience from time on the job and classroom training to supervise an apprentice electrician and do most residential and commercial jobs. A master electrician is the most elite category of electrician because they will have more skill, training and education than other electrician classes. They generally can run their own business or supervise a crew and can also train apprentice electricians. 

You may want to find out how long your electrician has been in business- the longer the better obviously but everyone has to start somewhere and you should also bear in mind that most electricians spend years training and studying to be where they are so a lack of years in business doesn’t translate into a lack of years of skill.

Another tip to bear in mind is where the business is located. Obviously if they are operated out of their home there is going to be less overhead and they can pass that savings on to you but it also means they may not be as stable as someone with a store front location. Of course this is strictly a personal preference and shouldn’t necessarily be a deciding factor. A lot of smaller contract businesses simply don’t see the reason t waste money on renting a store front when they are always out on calls.

You may also want to consider checking on references, even if your job isn’t a big one. You want to know the electrician you hire is a good one and if they can’t or won’t give you any references you may want to keep looking. Most professional electricians are happy to give you a few past and current clients to contact to ensure you are comfortable hiring them for the job.