Know your industry

Providing electrical technician certifi cation

ETA International Founded: 1978 Headquarters: 5 Depot Street,

Greencastle, Ind. 46135 Annual dues: $40-individual, $20-student, $250-institutional, $500-lifetime Phone: (800) 288-3824 Website: www.eta-i.org

At a time when nearly every sector of the job market is unpredictable, skilled jobs are at a crossroads when it comes to demand and quali cations. The two criteria are at loggerheads, and ETA International has chosen to prioritize skills over degrees.

It’s no secret that properly trained employees are essential to the success of any company. An executive order signed recently by outgoing President Donald Trump directs federal agencies to replace outdated degree-based hiring with skillsbased hiring and encourages private companies to follow this new protocol.

“Employers adopting skills- and competency-based hiring recognize that an over-reliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates and undermines labor-market e ciencies,” the order reads. “Currently, for most federal jobs, traditional education — high school, college, or graduate-level — rather than experiential learning is either an absolute requirement or the only path to consideration for candidates without many years of experience.”

Under the order, private employers are also encouraged to use any valid and reliable method of collecting information on an individual for the purposes of making a decision about job quali cation when hiring or promoting.

Founded in 1978 by a group of technicians who realized the practice of degreebased hiring was not ful lling the needs of the industry, ETA International provides accredited technical certi cations per the ISO 17024 standard for certi cation bodies. To verify that these technical professionals have su cient training in industry standards — including troubleshooting techniques, knowledge of test equipment, and installation procedures — ETA certi cations test the knowledge and hands-on skills needed in today’s high-tech industries.

ETA has issued more than 200,000 technical certi cations covering more than 90 certi cation programs in a variety of

Since 1993 Since 1993

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Like ACT Engineering Department Manager Don Wells

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The Electronics Technicians Association focus on skills, not degrees. It has expanded its education program to include virtual learning. — ETA photo

KNOW YOUR INDUSTRY continued from previous page

technology fields, such as fiber optics, smart home, renewable energy, customer service, biomedical, information technology, wireless communications, and industrial. You can find ETA-certified professionals working for many well-known companies like Motorola Solutions, Google, Disney, and Verizon, not to mention the U.S. Armed Forces.

ETA’s stance is this: While book knowledge is important, if employees are unable to apply this knowledge in real-world scenarios, what use is it? [For a look at a trend toward embedding professional credentials within bachelor’s degree programs, see this month’s “Training & education,” page 12]

Accredited by the International Certification Accreditation Council, ETA certification and FCC commercial license exams are also reimbursable from the Veteran’s Administration.

Those interested can explore certification pathways, find a test site, post a résumé, and join the thousands of students, professionals, and institutions worldwide who have become involved in the not-for-profit professional trade organization for electronics and related industries. Membership is not required to take an ETA examination.

Keeping up with the times, the organization has pushed remote learning to the forefront of its curriculum this year, partnering with ExamRoom.AI to offer AI-integrated online exam proctoring solutions. ETA will also pay for the remote proctoring service as a thank you to the trade association’s customers.

To take a remotely proctored ETA certification exam through ExamRoom.AI, all remote examinees must have a working web cam and microphone. Follow the procedure on the company’s website, www.eta-i.org, to get started.

The association also announced in December that its primary trade show, the ETA International Education Forum, will be moved from March to September of 2021. The forum is part of the International Wireless Communications Expo every year. Education Forum at IWCE 2021 will now take place Sept. 27-30 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas. Conference attendees who paid to attend the 2020 live event will automatically have access to attend the 2021 event in the fall with a pass of equal value. The availability to use these credits towards other digital opportunities will be announced in the near future, ETA says. — Charlie Barks EA

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