Jaco, we just brought on our 5th electrician and electricians now make up 50% of our team. Finding good people with experience is hard (if not impossible in this industry), so we’ve settled on finding young people with zero solar experience who are very interested. That way, we get to teach them blue boxes from the start and the emerging PV standards out of the blocks.
Two of our best staff members were young people who messaged our ad on social media saying they were unemployed and tired of being on the couch and wanted to work in an “internship” or “apprentice” role to learn about solar.
We will soon be advertising in Gauteng. If we get any such enquiries up there and you are still looking, I will gladly forward.
What a process it was to find a suitable candidate. Thanks to @pvdw1 who directed me to Sol-Tech, I received a list of Electrician that has successfully qualified in the last 2 years. After some emails and calls I found a suitable candidate. If all goes well, he will join my company on the 1st of May.