Electrical Contractor and Entrepreneur
Teenage helping an electrician commenced his career interest, supplemented by college engineering training. But he educated himself in the “School of Hard Knocks” to succeed within the business world. As this story illustrates, early certainty of a general career goal makes it easier to assess whether you are still on the right path with each new employment – and no job is a binding commitment.
EARLY CAREER INTEREST
HK’s father was a salesman within the meat industry. Later in his father’s career, he advanced to develop and manage a new sales territory for a different meat company, which recruited him due to his successful sales reputation. As HK recalls: “My father could sell ice cream to Eskimos.”
Both parents were graduates of a four-year college. His mother spent an additional year in a graduate program for library science, which led to periodic employment within their local school district as a librarian.
INTERNSHIP
HK was the oldest of two children. His sister was not a factor in HK’s career choice but his uncle was, as an electrical contractor who hired his 12 year old nephew, HK, as an apprentice. HK was therefore exposed early on to the work of electricians. He enjoyed the type of work and the camaraderie of the seasoned veterans.
EARNING THE RESPECT OF SENIOR CO-WORKERS
As the nephew of the business owner, HK wisely realized that he should cheerfully accept the nastiest / dirtiest jobs in the field in order to earn the respect of his senior co-workers, which he did.
Editor’s note: Earning the respect of more experienced co-workers is an important challenge for anyone starting a job, whether a first job or transferring your skills to a new business organization within a few years of retirement.
It is especially important for the family member / relative of a business owner / manager, whose employment introduction will always be greeted by long time co-workers with a degree of reasonable suspicion: will this new hire be lazy but protected by management? Family related new hires should consider showing up early, working at least as hard as the others and asking them for work guidance, in order to dispel the image of the lazy relative.
HIGH SCHOOL
HK devoted himself to his high school studies to attain class rank somewhere within the top 10%. His academic interests were clearly within science and math courses. During his senior year, (before the advent of Advanced Placement – AP – courses), the school created an advanced math program for eight of the top math students, including HK.
Editor’s note: Unrelated to academics or specific career preparations, the following story demonstrates the common sense and reliability of HK, whose calm dedication to any task was apparently recognized by the most important adult in the country at the time but HK would never toot his own horn about such personal qualities, which are widely appreciated by anyone who knows him: While in high school, HK sometimes earned money as a caddy at the local golf course, which happened to be the home course of the then current U.S. President, “Ike’ Eisenhower. HK apparently did his job well, keeping up with the President but remaining in the background. One day, HK was summoned out of a high school class by the school principal. HK was never a discipline problem, so he wondered why he was summoned. The principal said: “The President has a special golfing partner today, Arnold Palmer, and he wants you to be his caddy. We will drive you to the course immediately and later explain to your teachers why you’re missing classes today.”
COLLEGE
HK’s guidance counselor didn’t try to expand HK’s horizon of college opportunities, which HK himself limited to universities within a 2-3 hr drive from home. This narrowed down to two schools, each providing an engineering curriculum. One was a state school with on-campus enrollment of many thousands. The other was a smaller, private university, well known for its engineering curriculum. HK chose to enroll in the smaller school (several thousand students) which seemed to focus its curriculum on engineering rather than as a mere option for its huge student body.
HK’s chosen university offered a four- or five-year program for its engineering curriculum. For the final two years, electrical engineering courses were focused on either power or electronics. Electronics was then the “newest, most exciting” focus, which attracted most of the engineering students. KH was in the minority, opting for courses focusing on electric power issues.
The fifth-year engineering courses offered a focus on learning the business side, including financial issues. After 4 years of high school plus 4 years of college – always working within his enjoyable electrical contracting field, usually with his uncle’s business, during breaks in the school schedules – including Christmas vacation – HK was ready to jump from academics to the full time, real working world. Therefore, he declined to invest another year in academics but now looking back, realizes that he might have well used that fifth year to get up to speed about business financial issues, rather than having to learn through experience, also known (informally) as The School of Hard Knocks.
FIRST JOB NOT A BINDING CAREER COMMITMENT
HK’s relatively small, private university provided an excellent career guidance department which offered advice and lined up many job interviews for its graduates. In the Spring of his senior year, HK interviewed with about 6 companies involved in the electrical engineering field.
One college summer job was with a large public utility within the electric power industry. This experience led HK to conclude that too often within the public sector, managers were not motivated to work hard and anticipate new developments. But since one job experience might not be an accurate reflection of the entire public sector, HK interviewed with another public utility with a reputation for adopting modern practices. However, that job would have required moving to New York City, which was a non-starter for HK’s small, rural town background.
The alternative to working in the public sector is, of course, the private sector. An interview with a large, international corporation to work at its local refinery seemed an interesting opportunity to put his formal education to use because the refinery generated its own electricity and therefore HK would be involved in both design and construction of many aspects of electrical engineering. HK worked there for about 5 years and had the opportunity to advance to a position in Texas but concluded he didn’t like that geographic area and equally important, one who truly wanted to succeed in an oil refinery context should be a petroleum engineer, not an electrical engineer.
BASIC QUALIFICATION: PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING LICENSE
While Hk was working for the refinery, he passed the 5-year minimum time requirement for post college, engineering experience, to take the professional licensing exam to become a certified, Professional Engineer (P.E. license). He passed. The required professional references were also provided so HK became an official P.E., licensed in both Pennsylvania and, by reciprocity, in Delaware.
SECOND JOB NOT A BINDING CAREER COMMITMENT
Looking to move on from working with the petroleum production industry, HK heard about a small engineering firm which provided electrical system design plans for its customers. The prospective employer noted to HK that the company’s patriarch would soon retire so HK could join the founder’s son in a new partnership. HK accepted the offer but quickly concluded that the son was a “weird duck” with whom HK could never partner comfortably so he resumed his employment search, again hoping to join an engineering firm providing electric system design and construction services.
LUCK: PREPARATION MEETS RANDOM OPPORTUNITY
By “happenstance” HK was an occasional participant in a local, men only, bridge club. One of the fellow card players was a second-generation owner of a large, privately owned, electrical contracting business. The third generation of that family business was about to take over ownership and management of a new, but family related, electrical contracting business, involving a wide range of electrical contracting activities ranging from design through construction and maintenance of mostly commercial and industrial electrical systems.
The opportunity to get significantly involved in the construction end of electrical contracting was very appealing to HK. Discussions about employment prospects involving the business progressed over several months while management considered how to afford hiring HK in the absence of current projects to finance such a new, high-level employee. Finally, a new customer project was signed up so the company and HK negotiated an employment contract to engage his P.E. skills and provide him the potential of employment with the third generation family business.
INDUSTRY CHANGE PROVIDES OPPORTUNITY FOR NEW INITIATIVE TO ADD VALUE TO CAREER
Over the next decades, the company’s business grew slowly but steadily. As in most businesses, especially during this evolving Age of Technology, “the only constant is change.” Computers were coming into use within the electrical contracting business, just as they were being utilized throughout the business world for word processing and spreadsheet applications. More sophisticated, complex uses, were yet to be predicted or developed.
The company’s business reflected one of the well-established formats: it offered electrical system design consulting, followed by construction and electrical systems maintenance. This procedure worked well until the construction industry gradually adopted a different pattern -separating design from construction to avoid potential conflicts of interest between estimating the cost and then avoiding outside bidding by combining the construction phase within the same contract price. When customers approved a design for new construction and then opened bidding to complete the construction, new attention had to be given to properly bid to win the construction phase: strike a balance between (A) underestimating the projected costs and then lose money and (B) overestimate the projected costs and then lose the bid to a lower bidder.
Could computers assist the bidding process? HK took the initiative to study how computers could be involved to efficiently and correctly project job costs. Co-managers were skeptical but HK sensed the future of technology assistance and after some research, recommended bringing a seasoned electrical construction foreman into the main office to work together with HK as they developed and continuously modified a computer based estimating program which was tested and proved immensely efficient and accurate to assist the company’s bidding process, which still required human “eyes on” for the data to be entered into the system (to avoid GIGO or garbage in, garbage out).
HK became the company’s “guru” for the combined application of technology and engineering principles. By adding this value to his job performance, along with the previously demonstrated common sense and dedication to increasing his engineering skills, HK was not only respected by his fellow managers but warmly welcomed with the opportunity to buy out the third generation’s family ownership and become a valued, non-family owner and President of the business, which expanded under its new leadership both geographically (adding more offices) and in services in order to better service its customers.
LEARNING THE BUSINESS SIDE OF THE SKILLED PROFESSION
While working with some financial consultants to structure the corporate stock of the second-generation company in order to buy out the retiring principal ownership, HK was informally schooled in strategies to enable a key group of employees to buy into a portion of equity ownership and gradually increase that percentage. Thus, HK was able to “engineer” (pun intended) the eventual sale of his ownership interest in the third generation of family ownership, to enable him to retire.
CAREER SATISFACTION
HK appreciated the precision required to understand and solve math problems. He brought such attention to detail to the design and construction phases of electrical power systems. In so doing, he developed long lasting, happy customer relationships.
After mastering the basics of his own skills, HK was able to envision the larger business perspective of the competitive bidding process and earlier than many competitors, understand the creative uses of technology to make his organization’s work more efficient and accurate. He persisted in developing an estimating program which proved worthwhile and was mirrored by a widely used software company, used by many electrical contracting firms today.
Editor’s note: Along his career path, HK earned the respect of everyone at every level who got to know and rely upon his judgment and his appreciation for the work of his co-workers, from part-timers to the most experienced practitioners and the highest in the management chain.
