Up to 3000 Vacancies at Openreach.

[@Lee]

This forum is how I found out about and applied to Openreach to become a Network engineer.
I thought it would be fitting if I did likewise and gave a link so others can apply if they wish.
Best job I've ever had. 'Livin' the dream' as we say eh, @Soot1e

No smart arsed comments about brewing tea all day please, @Auric Goldfinger et al  

https://www.btplc.com/Careercentre/careersatbt/openreach/Engineers/index.htm

We’re looking for people who are:

• Able to make a connection with our customers in their workplaces and homes.
• Happy working outdoors. Whether it’s glorious sunshine or bracing British weather, our engineers are out connecting people.
• Open to new technology. Nothing too scary and we’ll always support you, but you need to be comfortable using smart devices and ready to learn as new tools emerge.
• Ready to give their best. The sort of person who always sees a job through and takes pride in doing it properly.
• Physically fit. You don’t need to be a marathon runner, but will need to be fit enough to safely climb a telephone pole and carry a ladder.
• Prepared to roll up their sleeves. Working in the great outdoors on our network means getting your hands dirty from time to time.

• Able to manage their time as well as their workload. This is critical, our customers rely on us and we need individuals who are truly committed to delivering service.
  
   

  What does an engineer do?

  As one of our engineers you could be responsible for building our network, or installing and maintaining broadband for our customers – covering residential customers as well as businesses on behalf of a variety of communication providers.

  This isn’t an office job so you won’t be tied to one location. Instead you’ll be on the road, in your van and out in the fresh air. You’ll be visiting lots of different places and working in all kinds of buildings including our telephone exchanges – our central hubs for connecting customers. You might find yourself working at a street cabinet, up a telegraph pole or in the customers’ premises. The type of work you’ll be carrying out will be physical, for example you might be required to climb a telegraph pole and work at height.

  This is a customer focused role so quite a lot of the work is done alone, but you’re never really alone as you’ll be interacting with customers, getting together with your team and there’s always people for support at the end of the phone - from your manager and team mates to dedicated teams there to help. 

[mac11irl]

36 minutes ago, Lee01 said:

We’re looking for people who are:

• Able to make a connection with our customers in their workplaces and homes.

 

 

Very punny

[mac11irl]

On a hijack note -

Iarnrod Eireann Irish Rail are advertising for a CEO as our current one is leaving his position earlier than full terms due to taking a position elsewhere... 

Not sure its officially listed yet,got the internal notification today.

[MickA]

Not for me I'm afraid, I get dizzy cleaning the upper windows off a ladder

[@Lee]

1 minute ago, MickA said:

Not for me I'm afraid, I get dizzy cleaning the upper windows off a ladder

Hangin' off an 11 metre stick's a doddle once you get the hang of it. I was wary at first but the training is first rate.

[Auric Goldfinger]

1 hour ago, Lee01 said:

No smart arsed comments about brewing tea all day please, @Auric Goldfinger et al  

 

 

 

As if I would................

[Breezy_Pete]

Good on you Lee for passing this on.

[MickA]

10 minutes ago, Lee01 said:

Hangin' off an 11 metre stick's a doddle once you get the hang of it. I was wary at first but the training is first rate.

 

I forgot to say I'm old not working (all but retired) so definately don't want to hang off poles.

 

It looks a good job for a young en, or younger than me anyway

[VWD]

For those interested, there is an old Telecomms disease called pole belly. The modern breed of BT blokes, have the luxury of harnesses with fall arrestors. older blokes started off with a leather belt, safest one IMHO, as it had a pole clamp . But pole belly come around when after a few years of hoisting a ladder up a pole, climbing up a pole stepped for a bloke a lot taller than you( so you have to use arm & stomach muscles to get up) , you develop a large solid stomach mass. And then learning the art of "sitting" on the belt. Tday's generation, never had the "joy?" of climbing to the top of a major route with eight way arms and regulating the wires on the outside. That's fun. Or working on 40ft + rhombic aerial poles on the west coast of Scotland in a gale.

Then there's the equal pleasure of underground work.

I've had blokes calling at my door to work on my phone. They claim to be "Engineers", but in my era, an Engineer earned the title. Start as a TTA, serve a three apprenticeship with a lot of time spent at training school. When you can explain how a lot of calls got routed over one cable in the old days, or the difference between System x/y/ Nortel, then in my book you might just earn the title. How to lead wipe an old lead sheath cable, or fix up an old plastic sheath cable, or joint a cable and seal it with a heat shrink joint.

Been there, earned the T shirt, and now enjoying the Civil service final salary pension, and I'd do it all again.  For the likes of those saying it's all tea brewing. That was on Mon-Thursday. Friday ,lunchtime was a different brew in my apprentice days.

BUT, the olny thing to watch out for was dig poo on the pavement under a DP.

[@Lee]

On 2/3/2018 at 23:21, VWD said:

 

BUT, the olny thing to watch out for was dig poo on the pavement under a DP.

We're still taught to check the soles of boots for dog shoite before climbing

[VWD]

7 hours ago, Lee01 said:

We're still taught to check the soles of boots for dog shoite before climbing

Boots on poles gets smelly hands-on way down. Dag muck at the base of the pole, gets a slippery ladder .solid on way up.  But not on way down.

[Ttaskmaster]

Couldn't aford the drop in salary, otherwise I would consider it.

Also wouldn't really benefit from the "free broadband" as we're on rural copper line at 0.7Mbps, unless I installed my own fibre line...

 

But most worrying is that pension - BT Pensions' primary investment is in the company I currently work for... and I know how bad that is!!!

[gadgetman]

On 06/02/2018 at 11:19, Ttaskmaster said:

Couldn't aford the drop in salary, otherwise I would consider it.

What is the salary out of interest? 

[Ttaskmaster]

22 minutes ago, gadgetman said:

What is the salary out of interest? 

 

Did you not click the link?

 

Salary & benefits

 

The starting salary is £20,000. Individuals employed permanently in the London pay area receive a London Weighting allowance of either £3,380 (inner London) or £1,670 (outer London) depending on location. An allowance of up to £1,431 is payable to people working offshore on the outer Scottish Islands.

On completion of a successful first year this will increase to £23,650 plus a 10% on-target bonus leading to on target earnings (OTE) of £26,015.

[Auric Goldfinger]

2 hours ago, Ttaskmaster said:

 

The starting salary is £20,000. 

 

Cost more than that for Tea Bags, Milk and Sugar

 

 

** Other hot/cold sweet milky drinks are available **

[Soot1e]

I'm still working for OR,   49years and counting but will be retiring sometime this year.  

[vrskeith]

Not a Zero contract, as they want you to do 100 hours a week(lol), just to catch up with Government targets and BT poor performance. 

Edited 8 February, 2018 by vrskeith

[Ttaskmaster]

On 07/02/2018 at 18:25, Auric Goldfinger said:

Cost more than that for Tea Bags, Milk and Sugar

Exactly.

 

Meanwhile, since BT/OR have utterly failed to deliver the "Superfast broadband, up to 20Mbps" within the "six to nine months" that they've been promising us for about five years now, Gigaclear have just started installing fibre for speeds up to 1Gbps, with the cheapest package having a guaranteed minimum of 100Mbps...

[Sad555]

Don’t blame the engineers...........they work hard and are under a lot of pressure .......years and years of under investment is why the company is in this position now.

Edited 9 February, 2018 by Sad555

[VWD]

On 2/8/2018 at 17:51, Soot1e said:

I'm still working for OR,   49years and counting but will be retiring sometime this year.  

 

Soot- WORKING- NOBODY works for OR/BT/GPO(T)/ POT. Many were employed, but few worked. Problem I see these days is that whilst they still refer to themselves as "Telecom Engineers", few are qualified to hold that title.

At least on  A or B scheme, your pension will be on the final scheme.

[Sad555]

“Soot- WORKING- NOBODY works for OR/BT/GPO(T)/ POT. Many were employed, but few worked. Problem I see these days is that whilst they still refer to themselves as "Telecom Engineers", few are qualified to hold that title.

At least on  A or B scheme, your pension will be on the final scheme.”                             

I consider this Remark to be a great insult to  many past and present engineers on the kit.

[Soot1e]

Very few new 'uns come from a technical background as new starts.   When I was doing local interviews, only about 10% of them knew what a Volt or an Ohm is and the management were not concerned at all.  Coupled with the annual salary being £6000 less meant we were not recruiting (in my opinion) the right kind of engineer who can work on their own and solve technical problems.  I'll be proved right in the end when it all goes 'tits up'.  Very few being trained are being trained on UG skills, the company are relying on us old 'uns to repair cable faults and the numbers are rapidly declining as they are retiring early as I will be soon. Too many customers do not have an effective repair on the first visit and I'm often the 4th, 5th and even more,  engineer to come along and fix a fault, one visit I made was the 12th over a year before the customers broadband worked at an acceptable speed. 

I've had my pension for 6 years now and was on the A scheme but took the B scheme pension as it turned out to be more funnily enough.  I was actually thinking of calling it a day last week, the performance management scheme has returned in a new guise.  I've been clobbered with management spiel and stats about spending too long on jobs.  A nice warm sunny spring could see me gone as I've just bought a Pug 205GTI as a project  

[@Lee]

@Soot1e, I was on another fibre course this week and the trainer told us that WAU's were going out (good), audits will be coming back in a big way (oh ****) and patch work would be returning along with more emphasis on quality jobs. Don't know if you know the name but he's from Essex way. Bill Tranter. Rotund chap who talks a lot.

[Sad555]

Same **** different day,you will find after a while things just go round and round  just like patch working the number of times I’ve heard that one.

 

[VWD]

5 hours ago, Soot1e said:

Very few new 'uns come from a technical background as new starts.   When I was doing local interviews, only about 10% of them knew what a Volt or an Ohm is and the management were not concerned at all.  Coupled with the annual salary being £6000 less meant we were not recruiting (in my opinion) the right kind of engineer who can work on their own and solve technical problems.  I'll be proved right in the end when it all goes 'tits up'.  Very few being trained are being trained on UG skills, the company are relying on us old 'uns to repair cable faults and the numbers are rapidly declining as they are retiring early as I will be soon. Too many customers do not have an effective repair on the first visit and I'm often the 4th, 5th and even more,  engineer to come along and fix a fault, one visit I made was the 12th over a year before the customers broadband worked at an acceptable speed. 

I've had my pension for 6 years now and was on the A scheme but took the B scheme pension as it turned out to be more funnily enough.  I was actually thinking of calling it a day last week, the performance management scheme has returned in a new guise.  I've been clobbered with management spiel and stats about spending too long on jobs.  A nice warm sunny spring could see me gone as I've just bought a Pug 205GTI as a project  

Things went wrong long ago ( circa the time of the first postal strike) , when standard times first appeared courtesy of a bean counter who'd never been out of the office. If I had an install where I only ran two span of DW4 ( all othr stuff was banned locally), then I'd say I'd had an easy install. SS - another headache as it was lmost impossible to get a decent earth. I remember one day in a slate area, digging a hole several feet deep,planting an old car radiator( present from the scrapyard), and driving an earth spike through it to get a plan 105/7 to work. But then ,I remember my mentor, an old time TO (who had to take promotion to th back of beyond to move up the ladder) telling me how well of TO's were after a recent pay rise ( some 30+ years ago) ,when TO's on max topped £10k. I think he was a bit upset, when I told him that after I got out, I'd topped £10 for the last few years, before shift allowance.

As for background, all it needs to be a decent engineer is natural ability and directed training to do things logically. As in the old days ,where we got trained to work out how it worked. Then if we met a fault, we looked at what was nor working and engineered a solution. I see it on here ,only too often on electrical faults. It's change this or that. And in a nilly willy fashion.