Semiskilled workers, such as assemblers and power-truck operators, ordinarily need only brief on-the-job training. Skilled workers, such as stationary engineers and machinists, require considerable training to qualify for their jobs. Many learn their trades on the job, but training authorities recommend completion of three- or four-year apprenticeship programs as the best way to acquire skill in a trade.
Machine-Trades Occupations are concerned with installing, setting up, running, keeping up and repairing machines and mechanical equipment used to make parts out of materials such as metals, paper, wood and stone. Most jobs in this category require skills and judgment that can be gained only through training and experience. Therefore, apprenticeships or helpers' jobs are the best way to get into most machine-trades occupations.
Office Occupations require workers to perform a wide variety of tasks associated with a business and other kinds of organizations. Clerical workers, secretaries and typists maintain files, take dictation, type and operate office machines. Professional and technical workers give legal advice, prepare and analyze financial reports, design computer systems and arrange bank loans.
Office work attracts and employs people from widely different educational backgrounds. Some jobs can be entered with only a high school education; others, however, may require a college degree. Some types of clerical work are detailed and repetitive. A great many office workers, however, apply their skills to solving problems and devising ways to improve services and to make operations more efficient. Apart from certain special skills office workers possess, they need to exercise judgment and must have the ability to communicate their ideas to others, Paramedical Occupations are those that require working in and around private and public hospitals; serving individuals in institutions, in business and other establishments; and rendering services that are re quired by crime, fire, accidents, riots, acts of war, etc. A number of paramedical jobs require special training and licensing.
Processing Occupations are concerned with treating, mixing, compounding and refining materials and products such as metals, foods, wood products and chemicals. Jobs typically involve working with vats, ovens, mixing machines, crushers, grinders and similar equipment. A large number of beginning opportunities for technicians occur in processing occupations.
Programming and Computing satisfy data-processing needs that have increased very rapidly over the past decade. Business organizations have become more complex as scientific and technical knowledge has expanded. The computer has enabled us to keep pace with the increasing need for more direct access to information. Workers in computer and related occupations prepare data in the form necessary for machine processing; they operate computer consoles and various related equipment and analyze and interpret the machine's output.
Most computer careers require specialized training that varies in content and length of time. While there are no universal educational requirements for systems analysts and programmers, a college degree is increasingly important, especially for work in scientific and technical systems. Computer operators usually need at least a high school education. However, training and experience are considered more important than formal education.
All computer jobs, including those that require a college education, stress the importance of learning on the job. While this is the primary source of training, college graduates in computer science may also spend a year or more working on a system to learn how it functions.
In addition to technical knowledge and skill, computer personnel need good power of concentration and should enjoy detail work. Those who operate equipment-keypunch or console operators-must have manual dexterity and some mechanical aptitude. Although programmers and systems analysts seldom run computer equipment, they also need mechanical ability to trace the source of data-processing errors. Sales Occupations offer career opportunities for those who have completed high school as well as for college graduates, for those who wish to travel and those who do not wish to travel, and for salaried workers as well as for those who prefer to be in business for themselves.
Outside of retail selling, most sales persons are men. A large number are automobile salesmen, automobile-parts countermen, gasoline-service attendants and route men. Mostly, sales jobs require selling for manufacturers, service firms, wholesalers and retailers. Space Exploration comprises manned and un manned operations, communication by Telstar, work in the oceans' depths and the use of automated, petrochemical and similar complex manufacturing and processing systems, as well as biomedical research. The acquisition of knowledge in these and other areas of applied science would be impossible without the use of sensitive instruments that provide the means for exact measurements and control, and information as to storage and retrieval. This rapidly growing and increasingly important area of applied science is broadly termed instrumentation.
Although some of the principles of instrumentation and automatic control have been known for almost 200 years, it is only within the last thirty years that much of the theory, and the advanced techniques used in systems analyses, have been developed. The serious demand for the skills needed in measurement and the use of control equipment has resulted in the stepped-up development of new methods and devices in instrumentation. New industries, new applications and the development of many facets of physics have created and are continuing to create new methods of instrumentation and control.
The availability of analog and digital computers, the development of minutely accurate position sensors, and the techniques for storing vast quantities of information for easy retrieval are creating a revolution in the business-machines industry and in the machine-tool field, and are promoting new skills in industries that require closed-loop control systems to provide automatic process or systems control.
Adequate training of engineers, scientists and supporting technical personnel is an increasing problem. Highly qualified instrumentation personnel must be trained in not one but several of the traditional scientific or engineering disciplines. They must combine both mechanical and electronic engineering with theoretical and applied physics in order to develop the devices and concepts of instrumentation.
Structural-Work Occupations include those required to build and keep up structural parts used in buildings, bridges, motor vehicles, etc. Factory production-line jobs, as well as those jobs done outside of factories or shops, belong in this category. Workers use hand and portable power tools. They work with wood, metal, concrete, glass, clay and other materials. Since most of these occupations require knowledge of the materials being used, beginners will find apprenticeships and helpers' jobs a good way to enter the structural-work occupations.
